Good and complete ALM solution with all you need in a single Solution

I am usin Polarion for my software factory and I have complete control of the actual status of all the projects. Delays, control of the developers, defects, versions, costs, documents, all in one single solution Also I can provide access to my customers to let them see the status of their development.

Pros

- Everyting you need to control the development of your teams in a single solution. - You have all the relationships between all the artifacts on your development - You can deploy your own development methodology from agile to waterfall or hybrid even your own defined methodology in an easy way - You can control in "real time" the satus of your development - You can extend or connect the solution with webservices

Cons

- Some lack of the documentation to make extensions or connections with other solutions

Product development and writing requirements

I do use the tool for entering/writing records and files including test plans/STDs and other more. I also use it for test execution and traceability matrix generate.

Pros

As one that was involved in writing requirements to the development team per our intended use: Traceability matrix is the most complicated module in the SW and it is just done properly and in a correct way. The navigation within the tool is also easy and reasonable.

Cons

there is no such thing in Polarion organization by 'Folders' or 'Tree', everything is done by searching and it is enough not to give the right name or it was forgotten, you will easy get lost.

Good first impression during evaluation but impossible to make it run on our server

We tested Polarion on a Siemens' server during approximatively 15 days, and it looked really nice. As a former DOORS 9 administrator, I found it really user-friendly (this is the main criticism I heard from users with D9): the documents can be edited as LiveDocs, but requirements can still be easily tagged, and linking seemed quite easy. As we had no requirement management tool for the moment, it was important to have a good word importer too. And, compared to the other products we tested, Polarion's one is the best I experienced. Licensing pricing seemed quite correct too. Not the cheapest, but not the most expensive. So we ordered licenses for our team and installed it in one of our server... Since we installed it in end of January, I saw it run only one time. Contacting Siemens's support was really hard (my colleague took approx. one week to get in touch with them), and after many hours spent trying to solve the problem, Polarion's server is still down, and we had to come back to our old habit of writing specs with Word. I am really regretting not to have asked IBM for a pricing of DOORS NG... As during the 3 years I was DOORS 9's administrator, IBM's support has always been easy to contact and efficient...

Pros

GUI user-friendly Word round-trip very quick and efficient Web-based application

Cons

Impossible to make it run on our server

Application Lifecycle Management at its best

Wir nutzen es für unserer Softwareentwicklung (Requirements-Management, Quality Assurance sowie Issue-Tracking) diese helfen uns in unserem Tagesgeschäft und liefern ein Rückverfolgbarkeit in den verschiedenen Software-Versionen.

Pros

Polarion ist intuitiv zu bedienen und sehr gut dokumentiert, man kann bestehende Word- oder Excel-Dokumente importieren und so diese Daten direkt wiederverwenden. Die integrierte Risiko-Bewertungsfunktion sowie das optionale Varianten-Management ergänzen das stimmige Bild.

Cons

Meine Testinstallation lief erst nach einer halben Stunde, das könnte man optimieren.

Polarion ALM with cusomization

I am using Polarion tool for requirements management for the complete product line. This is one of the best tools I have used till now.

Pros

1. It is a web based tool. So, there is no issue with the speed. 2. user friendly - word document look alike interface for writing the requirements. 3. Trace-ability - Very easy to make the trace-ability between different levels of requirements. 4. Review process - This tool can also help in the independent review of the requirements. 5. Customization - This tool can be customized according to the project or organization needs.

Cons

1. Training - end users need lot of training to use this tool which is bit expensive. 2. The document needs to be saved as and when the requirements are written on the interface document. There is no auto-save option.

Stay away

2 Years Polarion Administrator

Pros

Nice markiting slides. Its hard to find any pro.

Cons

Still doesn't work even after spending a fortune for consultants. Very slow Crashes frequently Its is necesarry to manipulate .xml files to get trivial task done. No admistration tools. Outdated user interface. Supports blames the browser however no major browser works flawless with polarion. Distracts people from getting their job done.