Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect Reviews

There are many, but the most important is traceability, and having the option to quickly drill down from a birdseye view to the little details, and back.

I can create requirements, draw all kinds of UML diagrams, link it all together and produce nice PDF reports and charts for the stakeholders. We even quit using JIRA and perform issue tracking with a nearshoring team of 10 people directly in Sparx.

Once you know the tool, there is not much left that I miss. It lacks some collaborative functions like sending emails when a status changed. But I can perfectly live with that, by using Discussions and Model Mail in EA. Another thing is the locking of diagrams etc., which is important when working in a team. This can be a little bit cumbersome. But here I also have found a nice workaround, so again, I can perfectly live with that.

What I miss is a way to hide stuff that I don't need, so that all the windows and views are not clustered with unnecessary stuff. That would also be nice for new team members, so that they are not lost so many times.

I've been using it for four years.

We've had no issues with the deployment.

It is very stable. It only doesn't like when it loses connection to the database repository, but even after a forced reboot, I have never lost any data.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I only used it a few times, when I forgot passwords or license keys. The support was always fast and excellent.

I always compare EA with a lovely beast. It seems very complex at the beginning, because it provides you with all options in all places, but once you realized that you don't have to use it all, and you know your workflow, it just works perfectly.

We did it in house. It is a simple installation. Also, setting up the key store for managing the floating licenses is no rocket science.

The price for such a tool is very fair. You can choose between different versions depending on your needs, and you can scale up any time later. There is a free trial (30 days), and a free version of EA to view the model. This is perfect for stakeholder to see what is going on.

I really tried hard to find the best solution that suits all needs. JIRA/Confluence, and many UML tools like Magic Draw. The only tool that comes close is Visual Paradigm. After some time evaluating, I chose EA, because it gives me the freedom of writing SQL queries, and I can create backups of the whole model very easily. Also, the concept of floating licenses is very nice if you work with different external teams.

Just be prepared that at the beginning EA will overwhelm you with all its options. It is very hard for example to create your first nice looking report. But if you don't give up too early, EA will pay off on the long run.

When I confronted the developer team that I plan to switch from JIRA to EA, they were not really happy. But now, after a short while, they love it because they immediately see changes, have access to all the diagrams (ERDs, Sequence Diagrams etc.). They now always have the big picture (I'm using mind maps, for example), and wherever they are, they can simply right-click an element, click "Find in Diagrams" and see this element in context. We even do all time reports in EA, directly on the Issues, Requirements etc. The hidden power of EA comes with its "Tagged Values". We are doing scrum, with sprints and retrospectives etc. all in EA without any additional extension or third party tool.

We are building it right now. We first have to build a repository and the tool, and then we have to develop the training for different types of users. We are using its latest version.

Its ease of use and the breadth of the toolkit are most valuable. It has an incredible repository of artifacts to work with, and they're all cross-referenced. 

It works with a whole bunch of different standards. It works with BPMN, which is Business Process Modeling Notation, and it also works with something called TOGAF, which is the Open Group Architecture Foundation. There are different layers when you're dealing with architecture. There is the user interface, application, data, data servers, and all that kind of stuff. You have the infrastructure, hardware, and software layers, and then you have the application and business capability layers. You can model a business process and decompose it into all of the applications, data, and hardware to support it.

They should make the Save button easier to find. 

A simplified user interface for a lighter user would probably be useful. I am not sure if such an interface is already there.

I have been using this solution for six months.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. Right now, we've only got a hundred books, but we want to have hundreds of thousands of books. There are only three of us using it in our architecture group, and then there are probably 30 other architects in other parts of the company who are using it.

My colleague is dealing with technical support. 

One of my colleagues did that. I am not familiar with the setup, but I know it is pretty elaborate because, like anything, you got to configure it the way you want. The more robust the tool, the more configuration it usually needs.

In terms of the software solution, it doesn't take a lot of maintenance. It is like building out a library.

I would advise others to understand their needs and find a tool that really meets their needs.

I would rate Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect an eight out of ten. It is a very strong tool, but I don't have enough comparison points to give it a higher rating.

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.

Allowed us to validate design changes and give an indication of the code before even speaking with developers. It also allowed the architects to reuse work done by other projects or by other architecture specialities. It is more structured than tools like Visio making it easier to build accurate diagrams.

• Ability to manage a meta-model that support a single source of truth for models
• Ability to capture concept thinking diagrams (referred to as white boarding)
• Reverse engineering capabilities
• Collaborative functionality
• Ability to trace through from a requirement statement to impacted logic was extremely powerful to us

Collaborating on a medium to large model resulted in significant performance problems, in some cases critical issues. It did not include sufficient flexibility for architecture work targeting business stakeholders. Very much a tool focused at application architecture despite having functions covering higher architecture domains.

I've been using it for eight years in total, and five on a daily basis.

We have had some stability issues but these varied version by version.

The scalability issues limit us from expanding the use of the tool.

Initially this was excellent in early versions. The growth of the product has changed as the company has grown. We were not able to get resolution to scalability issues in reasonable timeframes for versions nine or 10.

IBM's tools and a number of other tools primarily UML focused. In v7 Sparx was miles ahead of the competition, fast, flexible, priced affordable.

It was straightforward for single use, but for collaborative use it is slightly more complicated.

In house team. If you're thinking of scaling it up I would recommend linking the commitment to pay for the product to demonstration of the tools ability to support the team size and use you are proposing and ensure contracts are in place with tight SLAs if issues occur.

It's impossible to tell, as the tool has helped to swing decision making in a few high level business meetings but mostly considered a tool to improve the efficiency of architecture.

The current market landscape is changing. The recent work I've done with Orbus IServer to be a serious contender.

Be realistic about what you team can achieve. In a single use situation there is little advise needed but if you are intending to deliver it into an organisation, ensure that

• The way it will change how you work is possible (considering people and processes)
• The cost is reasonable
• The competition has been assessed using a POC not marketing ware (e.g. Orbus)
• The training impact is understood (The tool is not trival to use)
• The business view is not ignored. In my experience this tool does not remove the need to render information for a business audience separately and neither does tools like Orbus.

Mostly, we are using the solution around the IT department. We use it for functional analysis. That said, I have also tried for two years to use it more in business cases.

The variety of diagrams available is excellent. 

You are able to combine different diagrams together and to use a UML component in a different diagram, for example. It's quite flexible. 

The initial setup was pretty easy.

The solution is scalable. 

We have found the stability to be very reliable.

The solution is affordable. 

The user interface is not so good. It's not easy for someone to use it at first. The product takes some getting used to.

In the next update, I would like to see more integration with databases in the cloud. For example, Amazon. I'd like that mostly to plug the Sparx tool above any Azure database or Amazon database in the cloud. 

You do need to set up something separate in order to broadcast or share information. That's not so easy to do with the product itself. 

I've used the solution for 14 years at this point. It's been well over a decade. 

While we have had performance issues in the past, it was mostly due to the database we had chosen a few years ago. We've since moved over to another one and now it's really good.

We have 25 people in our company that directly deal with this product.

The solution is very easy to scale. It's no problem at all. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

I used technical support maybe two years ago for the first time. Mostly, I look online and all around for discussion articles. I have to say that Sparx has a lot of documentation and articles and user groups that users can just dig into and find information. I just asked a question a few years ago about a possible feature that I wanted to see in the next version. It wasn't really for troubleshooting.

The first setup was 14 years ago, and therefore it has been a long time. However, it is very easy and not overly difficult. 

The maintenance involved is all about the database. We moved from an old database to a newer one. However, that's it. There is no maintenance, events, or tasks to schedule regularly.

We did not need a vendor to assist us. We did not use a consultant or integrator. We implemented the solution ourselves and we were able to configure it in-house as well. 

I'm just a customer and an end-user. 

The pricing is reasonable. It's not overly expensive. The price to quality ratio is very good. 

Extra costs are mostly related to the training part. The tool is not very user-friendly. Most of my time is around training new users around UML and organizing the information. There are too many ways to use the tool and to organize, and a couple of guidelines are very essential to keep the value up. Training is very important and useful.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I'm currently using the latest version of the solution at this time. I can't speak to the exact version number, however.

I would definitively recommend the solution to any IT department as it's very cheap and very powerful. However, it is not very user-friendly. It's a modeling tool, and modeling is not very popular typically. That said, you can scale it to fit the requisite departments.

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).

The document generation tool. The ability to define templates based on our corporate documentation standards and automatically generate documents at a click of a button is such a productivity booster.

I don't know where to start. I've used Sparx at one organization and was subsequently primarily involved in the adoption and implementation of EA at another organization.

We transformed the tooling from a mis-mash of Gliffy diagrams, web-sequence diagrams, and some Aris for capturing requirements. We have implemented standardized EA models aided by templates. It increased the productivity due to ease of use. It provided a uniform tool from requirements analysis to technical design specifications used across teams. We have more complete models that are published and accessible, they reflect changes in real time. Links across components aids in impact assessment.

Repository integration. SVN based repositories can be a pain to merge changes. The database based repository can become slow.

I've used it for approximately eight years, but only about three years extensive use.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

We created a database repository. Adding users and growing the model did add a fair amount of latency.

We have had no issues scaling it/

I've not had to use customer service.

I've not had to use tech support. The online help, forums and tutorials were sufficient to solve the problems that I encountered.

I have evaluated various tools - IBM Rational Software Architect, briefly played with SyBase Power Designer and Archi. I found them difficult to use, a steeper learning curve, or they did only a portion of the modelling.

UML modelling, XML generation import/export, design patterns, automated generation of documentation, XMI import/export. Benefits to the business accrue from adoption of model-driven architecture principles and practices. The tool and its features make application of these principles productive, efficient and shared by the architects community, thus helping achieve the benefits in practice

Shared models capture digitally fundamental knowledge about the business and its representation in ICT systems. Tooling makes this knowledge shareable, reusable, validated, rigorous, open and  turns it into a common asset of the Company rather than an arcane informal insight of a few individuals. Helps communicate with vendors and quickly bring new hires or new project members up to speed on projects

In truth we are still using an older version of the product, and we are aware of a number of improvements that have been made to it since. We feel that compatibility with other MDA modelling products, particularly open source such as Visual Paradigm, Modelio or Capella is an area of improvement, as well as better integration with Integrated Development Environments. We would benefit from better support of REST web services and JSON. However we would not encourage ‘bundling’ Enterprise Architecture with IDEs: we prefer Sparx Systems to specialize in building the best modelling tool and features, but allowing a wide choice of IDES. The fundamental reason for this is that we cannot and do not wish to enforce the use of a single tool on all our partners: we want to be able to use a single model, not a single tool

We've been using it since 2010/11.

We've had no issues with the deployment.

We've had no stability issues.

We've been able to scale it to our needs without issue.

We have had very little, or no, need for customer service, which we count as excellent digital customer service level is delivered through the online tools and the forum.

It was in fact straightforward, which was one of the determinants for selecting it.

Implementation and training was done in house under control of an experienced MDA practictioner. We did in fact train our partners.

Depending of what items enter in the computation of ‘return’ the ROI can be estimated from high to very high, productivity gains measured in either shorter lifecycles or headcounts of personnel required to build effective models.

We have evaluated other products both before and after the adoption of Enterprise Architect. We selected EI as the best quality/price to ease of learning and use. 

The tool is not a substitute for brains; it boosts the productivity of your thinking process, resulting in the very fast production of good models, but of bad ones just as easily, except that a good thinker can sport bad designs early before they become implemented disasters.