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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect pros and cons

Vendor: Sparx Systems

3.9 out of 5

98 reviews
87% willing to recommend

3,846 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect offers automated document generation, supporting multiple modeling languages like ArchiMate and UML, and ensuring efficient traceability and management. Its customizable environment enhances adaptability, but a steep learning curve and inadequate documentation hinder usability. Scalability meets operational demands, though integration and data modeling need improvement. Portfolio management and user requirement functionalities require enhancement, affecting potential underutilization by companies seeking comprehensive IT architecture solutions.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect automates document generation, saving time and reducing errors associated with manual updates.

The software supports a variety of modeling languages, such as ArchiMate and UML, enhancing versatility in design and analysis.

It offers out-of-the-box profiles and frameworks, allowing customization to fit the corporate environment efficiently.

Provides a single repository for all architecture work, improving organization and accessibility of project components.

Its ease of use and scalability make it suitable for organizations of various sizes without compromising on functionality.

CONS

Its best features are not intuitive or easy to learn, limiting comprehensive utilization.

It lacks support for mobile systems and is slow with many users.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect's documentation is insufficient and not available in multiple languages.

The setup process is complicated, with deployment taking days due to numerous possibilities.

It has limitations in data modeling, offering weak control over metadata and standards.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Pros review quotes

JS

Management Consultant & Architect at Contextual Focus Limited

Feb 5, 2021

For the most part, we find that it is remarkable how inexpensive it is.

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IM

Senior Solutions Architect Lead at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 4, 2021

Its traversability is most valuable. I can use ArchiMate, and I can create a UML model. ArchiMate is for logical enterprise architecture, UML is for software engineering, and BPMN is for business processes. I can build it to have multiple models, and they are also traversable, which is not something that every tool allows. If there is a huge organization, you can segment it and have separate models for business technology or internal resource management system. You don't need to keep them in one model, and you can decide to segregate them.

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Anthony Houghton

Data Architect at UK Research and Innovatio

May 15, 2022

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect was easy to set up and it took just twenty minutes.

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Free Report: Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.

814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

TW

Software Developer at RowdenSoftwareSolutions Ltd.

Jul 24, 2020

It has led some teams to do better code reviews - to be less focussed on coding conventions (syntax) and more focussed on the semantics because of the abstraction level clear design affords.

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ML

Conseiller principal en architecture d’entreprise et de solution at Cronomagic Canada

Aug 25, 2020

The product offers very good support for all mainstream modeling notations and architectural frameworks.

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PO

IT Project Leader at Bank Millennium SA

Feb 20, 2024

The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

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RK

Entrepreneur-Consultant-Developer-Freelance at Dipl.-Ök. Roland Kossow

Sep 14, 2021

The best thing about the tool is that its database is open.

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JF

reviewer1355997

Business Owner at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Jul 16, 2020

The initial setup is easy.

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KD

Technical manager at Koninklijke Bam Groep N.v.

Feb 11, 2021

It is a very flexible product. It can do a lot. It is also a reliable product.

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Consultant with self employed

Jun 30, 2017

Automated document generation is a real time saver, no more cut and paste, no more keeping track of which diagrams are in which reports, no more last minute update panics. Just click a mouse and you've got an up to date report.

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Cons review quotes

JS

Management Consultant & Architect at Contextual Focus Limited

Feb 5, 2021

The presentation graphics need to be improved in future builds.

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IM

Senior Solutions Architect Lead at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 4, 2021

From a practical point of view, we need speed and reliability for creating a model and doing some really meaningful tasks such as application landscape, refactoring, etc. These are two primary criteria. Sometimes, when you import something, it creates the object duplicates, or it allows you to do something that you're not supposed to do. For example, validation is missing. This could be frustrating because when you work at a high speed, you need to come back and start fixing things that the tool allowed you to go with, which is not quite good. So, there should probably be some internal mechanisms to advise you about what you're doing and what is probably not the best idea.

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Anthony Houghton

Data Architect at UK Research and Innovatio

May 15, 2022

One room for improvement in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is that it's not very friendly. Another room for improvement in the tool is that it doesn't enable you to import the metadata from a database very easily, so reverse engineering of a database was very difficult. Its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement.

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Free Report: Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.

814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

TW

Software Developer at RowdenSoftwareSolutions Ltd.

Jul 24, 2020

Because its easy to create diagrams one needs to be vigilant on the housekeeping of orphaned fragments - I have written my own scripts to do this, maybe they are available now.

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ML

Conseiller principal en architecture d’entreprise et de solution at Cronomagic Canada

Aug 25, 2020

Even if there are web-based tools in the Enterprise Architecture tool ecosystem (like Prolaborate), the main modeling application is still a fat client application.

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PO

IT Project Leader at Bank Millennium SA

Feb 20, 2024

In general, we now have a problem with Sparx Enterprise Architect because many analysts think it's too complicated to use in a giant environment.

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RK

Entrepreneur-Consultant-Developer-Freelance at Dipl.-Ök. Roland Kossow

Sep 14, 2021

The automatic creation of reports based on the model elements could be improved.

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JF

reviewer1355997

Business Owner at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Jul 16, 2020

The documentation needs a bit of improvement. What I find is that when I'm trying to do something specific for some part of a project, in terms of documentation, it's kind of hard to get at figuring out if you don't use it all the time.

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KD

Technical manager at Koninklijke Bam Groep N.v.

Feb 11, 2021

I would like it to be less of a general tool. Currently, it is not a Swiss army knife that can do everything. It is not specialized for our purposes. We are a civil engineering company. We build things. We work mostly in what is known as Infra world in the Netherlands, which comprises objects such as bridges, locks, and water management. We would like to see more focus on such types of projects. It would be nice if it has more specializations. At the moment, it is very generic, and you have to create everything yourself. Our focus is more on user requirement management, which is currently very basic. I would like to see a lot more functionality in this area. Its basic functions for adding user requirements are perfect, but we need more features. Currently, it has limited possibilities for our requirements. I would also like to see better contract management and have it managed in a certain way.

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Consultant with self employed

Jun 30, 2017

Its best features are not intuitive or easy to learn. Most companies I have worked with, when I see what they are doing with it , are not using more than 5% of what they could and should be doing with it.

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Product Categories

Enterprise Architecture Management

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Enterprise Architecture Management

Business Process Design

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Camunda vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Lucidchart vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Visio vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Bizagi vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

ARIS BPA vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

LeanIX vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Visual Paradigm vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

erwin Data Modeler by Quest vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

MEGA HOPEX vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

IBM Blueworks Live vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Bonita vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

SAP PowerDesigner vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

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See all alternatives

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