Whilst it may be true that "product lifecycle management" is an area crying out for someone to charge to the rescue with a suite of brilliantly executed and implemented tools, current experience with products from all these companies suggests that they are not the guys likely to deliver it.

Rather, this is more an opportunity for idiot managers who believe the bullshit to spend huge piles of cash on useless, buggy, complicated chunks of poorly-integrated bloatware that will require dedicated teams of white-coated geniuses to keep it running whilst the engineers and designers who have to use it are reduced to screaming wrecks by the colossal waste and unfathomable process.

Or is it me?

"curtains for RequisitePro "!

That massive buggy, bloated, behemoth that reproduces the functionality of the humble windows file explorer.

I have seldom disliked a piece of software so much. The fact that OO design gurus Rational could produce this agglomoration of bad ideas has led me to doubt the whole OO design process.

Requisite pro is essentaily a container for word documents yet it never seems to have crossed anyones mind to "reuse the windows folder object".

I know you can tag requirements and get micky mouse cross references, but this is a feature most people use once before deciding that a simple spreadsheet does a much better job.

So long "smalltalk engine error" we will miss you.

back in the 1990s, what's now called Product Lifecycle Management was labelled Product Information Management (or even Product Data Management or even just Concurrent Engineering something) and the must-have product from the must-buy company was called Sherpa, from Sherpa Corporation (who were later bought, iirc, by SDRC).

Set the world on fire, didn't it.

Well, it worked for GPT according to the Sherpa references that Google turns up... hmmm.

IBM Rational to sell a whole suite of software to idiot managers that dont know their own company processes? Shurely shome mishtake!

And then someone has to go in and clean up the mess and try and make it fit how the engineers and designers actually work... Well it pays the bills.

That I am going to post another comment, just to emphasise how much I hate them, the hypocritical bloatards (ooh - I'm pleased with that word, can I claim it?).

See that famous painting by Munch "The Scream"? That's me that is, when I have to use their overpriced dreck or listen to their process "gurus".

> "needs a team of white coated geniuses"

Requirements, design, change management and configuration control is, sadly, a complicated business.

That means you are completely open to having a cack handed process knocked up by some of your very own egg-heads and a sweaty consultant on day one and suffering from it for ever more..

If only software was simply writing efficient for loops and avoiding goto's, eh?

"Requirements, design, change management and configuration control is, sadly, a complicated business."

Right. It is.

Which is exactly why you don't want their uncoordinated ill-conceived boat-anchorware round your neck.

Like Glenn says, it would be almost inconceivable that you could find more useless products than Rational Software Architect and its ilk, but Telelogic Tau would be it.

Half a day spent in the company of these dismal products would convince you that these guys do not have the answers when it comes to designing and developing complex software systems. They can't even solve their own problems.

I agree with you about process, but one of the things people forget about process is that you can change it. In the past I've been fortunate to work with some really good process guys and they would change things if they saw that it was necessary. Sadly, good process guys (like good architects and engineers) are hard to come by and just as likely to be hampered by inept management. Sigh.