Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

When I'm developing some of my applications, I collect the requirements from the customer and understand the workflows for different scenarios. I then model the workflows as the point of reference for the development team.

It allows some kind of reverse engineering, where if you have a database or some different languages, you can reverse engineer and get the diagrams, which is very helpful.

The Business Process Modeling or BPM part is the most valuable. Its ability to simulate scenarios is also very useful.

It can also create descriptions of the workflows. It has a feature in which if you create some BPMN process, a workflow diagram, and the description inside, you can actually simulate the whole scenario, and you get the description. That's very handy.

The Business Process Modeling or BPM feature can be improved to make it more interactive and user friendly because it is a tool for technical people. My current use is only for business process modeling notation and putting in the icons etc. You need to take them in as a class, which makes things very complex. Because of this complexity, it is not an easy-to-handle solution.

Enterprise Architect is not very good for mockups. We cannot create user screens and other similar kinds of stuff, which is bad. For these things, we prefer to use Axure RP and other similar solutions. They should either remove this feature from this product or provide some kind of connectivity with Axure RP so that people can do better mockups of screens and import them.

They need to augment and strengthen the BPM feature, which is the main feature. They need to put in some elements like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. They should look into such features because these things are coming up.

I started using this solution in 2003 when it was version two.

It is quite stable.

It is quite scalable. I didn't have any need to involve 30 or 40 technical business analysts or users. We had just a few users because it is used during the business analysis and design phase. Every team can use its own installation.

It is hard to access those people. You can get in touch only through email. The same problem is there with Visual Paradigm. They are also accessible only through email. I would rate their support a five out of ten.

There were two products, which were very popular initially. One was STP that was developed by people who started the object paradigm and human modeling. Rational Rose was the other one, which was taken away by IBM, and it was lost. After that, many other tools appeared.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is very easy to install.

It is really good if you want to develop workflows. It is not good for data modeling. For data modeling, Visual Paradigm is better.

I would rate Enterprise Architect a seven out of ten.

We use it for modeling and for making strategy.

Sparx offers good flexibility. 

The documentation could be better. Where I work, we speak French and we don't speak English, so we don't have anything in French. It's perfect in English, but we need something in French.

I have been using Sparx for 11 years. 

Stability is not perfect. When you are working with your notebook after 10 minutes that you don't touch your keyboard we see some stability problems with the system. It blocks it. They have to improve this. 

We have 100 tests. We have one company that represents Sparx here in Canada. They work with us and also give us technical support.

It's easy to scale because we integrated with Jira. It was very quick to start our work. It's very easy. It's good.

Their support is perfect. They are quick and courteous. 

We use Bonita, Lucidchart and erwin.

We had three months to compare and after that, we concluded that Bonita was very difficult to use for beginners. You have to have the experience, it's not easy for someone starting their career.

Sparx is more complex but in terms of functionality, it is easier to use. 

The initial setup is okay.

My advice would be to do a lot of training beforehand. We have invested a lot of money in terms of training because we didn't do it before, so it's a little bit difficult. 

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other tools like Microsoft Azure. That's really important to us. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We are using this solution for data modeling, data warehouses. We build the data models in the tool.

We are creating models, and working on workflows for creating the data models. There will be other teams that will change or modify them.

We are looking to have a process where other teams can change the data models and then their changes will be reviewed by the owners. Those are the workflows we are looking to link by using Sparx.

It is a very rich tool in terms of the functionality and the types of diagrams that you can create in this tool.

It gives us many options to create many other types of diagrams.

For data modeling, it is not very mature when comparing with other data modeling tools.

In terms of the workflows, we were initially thinking of having something automated where you have the options to check-in and check-out your data models. This would mean that you can get your data modeling changes reviewed by some of the team members.

The option to check-in and check-out option is not available in this tool. We are doing the steps manually to run the workflow that we defined. 

Even with the changes that the other team members will make, the owners of these respective areas will have to manually identify those changes and then merge them back to the enterprise models. That is what is lacking with this solution, that we have seen so far.

In the next release, I would like to see an automated way to check-in and check-out your data models and with the review process, where multiple people can make changes to a model, and with the workflow, everything will be automated where the data models can request someone to review the modifications. This would be everything that is needed in the next release.

We just started using this tool a couple of months ago.

So far, the technical support has been great. 

Support is a part of our license agreement.

They have helped us with setting up some of the initial support and workflows and that was very good.

Previously, I worked with IBM data modeling, called Data Architect tool with a different company. My experience with Erwin was brief but not very extensive.

When I changed jobs, we were evaluating other data modeling tools and finally chose the Sparx Enterprise Architect.

I wasn't a part of the initial setup.  

We had the help of the Sparx Enterprise consultants to set up this solution.

I am using Sparx as a client or a user of the tool, and as a user, I had to install the Sparx client on my machine. That was simple enough.

The configuration on these client machines is easy.   

The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin.

Other than the manual steps we have to take, the product is pretty fancy and gives you a lot of options. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We put the solution on all of our systems. We've got about 200 systems on it, however, it's not all documented yet. We have about a third of all of our systems covered. There are likely 5,000 users that need to be covered.

The pricing of the solution is pretty good. It's reasonable. 

Overall, It works pretty well.

It's easy to create all diagrams.

It's easy to search within the solution. 

It's very good software. 

There was some sort of glitch within the last version. Everything is in French and I tried to use English. It didn't work so well.

The window froze for five or ten seconds. You can click and click again and it takes a second to come up. It might have been specific to a version. 

I've used the solution for about two years at this point. It's been a while. 

We have a team of about 20 that work with this product.

I wasn't part of the initial implementation. I can't speak to how difficult or complex the setup actually was.

The solution is reasonably priced and not overly expensive.

I haven't had a chance to compare this solution to other products. For us, it works pretty well and we haven't had to look elsewhere for similar solutions. 

I'm a functional architect.

I'm not sure whether or not our company has a business relationship with Sparx or if we are just customers. 

We don't use the product for generic cogeneration. We don't use it yet for that, however, in the future, we might.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're mostly satisfied with the capabilities of the product.

Our primary use case is as a UML tool, a diagramming tool that also enables you to build an inventory of different objects and different entities. We are a customer of Sparx and I am an enterprise architect.

The most valuable feature is the ability to keep an inventory of reusable blocks, and use them in different diagrams with views of various templates that are also available. It also has the ability to work as an add-on with Zachman Framework and a variety of other frameworks adapted to this product. It's a good UML tool. 

I think the solution could be improved visually. It's not as visually appealing as other solutions. There is a difference between being focused on a technical audience or a business audience. A business audience requires a greater effort and good visuals. Integrations with SharePoint, for example, could be beneficial. If you are using on-premise installation, the sharing of your artifacts with people that don't have a license, can be somewhat complicated.

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This solution is scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward and it's a simple implementation. 

Although we use an on-prem version, they've now moved over to cloud so the sharing is much easier and has improved the solution overall. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

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.

Customized profiles allow you to create entities that are custom engineered to your organization. Do you want to separate non-functional requirements into two types, say high and low priority, with each one having custom tags such as owner, why needed, history, date needed and authorizer for the high priority you can have it all built in to a tool set.

In one organization, it allowed teams and team members all over the world to collaborate and sync up on specific detailed parts of the solution or model easily with a minimum of fuss by sharing the repository instead of having to e-mail diagrams or search through SharePoint to find the right diagram. Its easy to bookmark a diagram in a repo so someone else can open their EA client and quickly find and even modify it directly, if appropriate

Sparx EA has always had one strong negative that has kept it from dominating the market ( not counting the fact that the big guns can out market Sparx).

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.

I've even seen reviews of the product by people who worked with it in which they complain that it can't do things that it most definitely can do(e.g. I've seen it referred to as an exclusively single user tool).

Yes there are courses available but it's counter productive to teach everyone everything, don't confuse a business analysts by teaching him about class diagrams and document templates, don't teach a programmer how to create BPMN diagrams.

The webinars and videos help , there has been big improvement in the reference material that Sparx has made available.

Six years

No

Very very rarely.

No.

Very good.

Very good although there is no phone support.

I actually used a tool called TCC, Together Control Centre many years back which was very similar. It was created by Peter Coad of the (Coad-Yourdon methodology).

Unfortunately, some ruthless venture capitalist got control of the companies and tore it to pieces trying to make it a do all be all tool ("It's a floor wax - its a dessert topping").

Straightforward.

In-house ( mostly myself)

Always hard to say because it depends how you measure it but 20% or more is quite feasible.

Use floating licenses strategically.

Power Designer, Corso, Rational,BIZZDesign

Take the time to learn the features well - it will pay off.

I have been using it for six years and I am still learning new ways to leverage its features - not because of new versions but because of gaining an even greater understanding of the tool and how it works.

The number one recommendation I have about using this tool is to invest some time to understand how to use it properly.

Most people will use MSWord or Excel by just diving right in and using it and learning as they go, tinkering here and there and that approach works fine.

Do not use this approach with Sparx EA, you will end up using it as a fancy version of Visio which is like buying a Porsche to use for storage space.

Also focus your learning on what you will be doing with the tool ( i.e. if you will be creating requirements models don't waste time learning how to auto generate documents).

We're doing enterprise architecture work primarily. In one case we're looking at enterprise data modeling. In another case is mostly business architecture.

We haven't used the solution long enough to make any observations in terms of the product improving our company's functions. It's too soon to tell.

For us, the solution is evolving still.

I find it performs as well as other solutions that I've used, like QualiWare's Rational System Architect. It performs quite well.

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

Overall, the solution offers very good packages.

The initial setup is easy.

The presentation graphics need to be improved in future builds. It's primarily an architecture tool. Therefore, it's using certain formulas, and they aren't really very useful in terms of presentation graphics for executives. It's an ongoing issue. You do some kind of diagram, you then have to convert it into a Microsoft PowerPoint in order to get a certain look and feel. Otherwise, the design is just too obscure for executives to understand.

The product needs better tools for defining report templates. Sparx will generate automated reports based on whatever you select from the repository. It has this templating tool that's very flexible, however, I can't get the damn thing to work properly. It's just not very user-friendly. It's almost like a programming language. That's the thing that we keep coming back to tech support with to say, "What are we doing wrong?" If they offered a better report generating front end that will let someone quickly and easily configure what they want in their reports, that would be very useful.

I'm pretty new to the solution. I've used the solution for a little under a year at this point. It's likely been ten or 11 months so far.

While the solution has crashed a few times in the past year, I wouldn't describe it as unstable. There aren't really bugs or glitches on it. Mostly, it's fine.

I can't speak to the level of scalability of the product. The user community for our purposes is quite small. We haven't tested scaling it with larger user groups. However, it's not the type of tool you would role out to a larger community anyway. Therefore, from a performance scalability perspective, it's hard for me to comment.

That said, from a functional scalability perspective, it's packed with all kinds of features. Your enterprise architecture approach could certainly scale up to accommodate more and more of the types of analysis you'd want to perform.

We have two teams that use the solution. In one case, there are three people using it, and in another case there are seven.

We've used technical support in the past.

We've needed them for a few little obscure things and things just that are quite annoying to figure out. They've always been there and they're quite good.

We're quite satisfied with the level of assistance we receive. I would rate them at a perfect ten out of ten.

Personally, I've used a lot of different solutions, and a lot of different kinds of case tools. However, in both my client environments that we are presently using, we presently implemented Sparx and they had nothing like this before. This is really an eye-opener to them and a new kind of field for them to go into.

We found the initial setup to be very straightforward and simple. It's not complex at all. A company shouldn't have any trouble with the deployment process.

The pricing is excellent. It's very inexpensive.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We use different deployment models, including cloud and on-premises.

It's an excellent entry-level tool. I say entry level as case tools are typically a very expensive proposition to bring into a business, and not necessarily because of their licensing costs or their implementation costs. It is more the training costs of the individuals to start working and thinking in an architectural way and then using tools like this in a consistent and productive manner. You need a methodology investment and you need training investment, and then you need a setup investment for the actual enterprise architecture program or practice that you're going to work with.

The tool itself is comparable to a bunch of others. However, it's not as expensive as most. It's in fact so cheap that last year, due to delays related to the COVID lockdown, I ended up buying a license for myself. It's that inexpensive. It cost less than Microsoft Word. It's an excellent way for a company to start or an organization to start using an enterprise architecture discipline. However, it's not an end-to-end solution. It could be an end-to-end solution. It just involves training of resources and change management for different processes and for governance and all this. A lot of companies just either don't realize that at all or aren't prepared to make the investment outside of the cheap license.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

It offers a comprehensive toolkit that it provides very good capabilities. The kinds of coverage that it gives to enterprise architecture tasks are great. The diagrammatic flexibility that it has, the methodological flexibility, and diagrammatic flexibility are also very helpful. It can support lots of different metamodels that will allow you to implement different enterprise architecture methods. It'll diagram them all. It does a very good job of allowing you to structure your environment so that you can support lots of different kinds of analysis across domains of enterprise architecture. It's very flexible in that sense. For these reasons, I give it fairly high marks.

I was using this solution to document a Business Architecture, and including BPMN 2.0 Process Models that were then used to create Process Design documents. We were running V13.0 in an internal network with the then third-party product, and Prolaborate. The implementation of Prolaborate was in a test environment and this became an increasingly frustrating problem.

We were able to produce a range of Process-based reports that were published to Confluence reports, as well as our Business and Processes Architectures, for use by a large internal program. The Business end-users and external vendors seemed happy with the outcomes, although some members of the program management team struggled to understand the importance of these documents. 

The most valuable features are the flexibility and adaptability of Sparx Enterprise Architect. However, these aspects come at a cost of complexity in configuration and management of customization. 

Using EA involves a steep learning curve if you want to understand its capabilities and functionality.

Providing more detailed information about how to configure and adapt EA for consumption by users with less technical knowledge or experience would be helpful. Plus, provide online training that covers the basics of as well as more advanced topics. An introduction on how to do the basic configuration for the non-technical users would also be of benefit.

I was employed on contract by this company, but I had previously used Orbus iServer for Process modeling and developing Business and Enterprise Architecture artifacts. This company had previously used Visio. 

You can search for Business and Process Architects, who have limited technical expertise, and that can be a challenge. In that sense, we were very lucky to have a fantastic team of consultants, who had vast experience and knowledge in how to configure and adapt to meet our needs. They were also able to give us guidance when we were going down the wrong path.

In terms of cost, Sparx EA is probably one of the cheapest tools I have ever used. However, study the most important versions of EA before you buy it. I'd also recommend that you buy the edition up from the version you think you need, as we found that was an issue in our early days.

I wasn't involved in the selection and acquisition process. Since I began in this role, I have been working with SaaS products, such as Signavo's suite of products. In my view, these products are far more usable than client-server products, in terms of getting projects underway and using them in workshops. However, I think that they are not as versatile and functional as products such as EA, although they are rapidly catching up with desktop products.