We performed a comparison between OpenText ALM Octane and TFS based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The integration points are very good. Octane gives us a window not only into our manual testing, but also our automation testing and our performance testing. We can see all results from all three streams of testing in one place."
"The key feature is the usability. It is fast to learn and easy to use. It's very intuitive to work with. Most of the important functions are available via a few clicks, compared to other tools where I have to open a sub-menu and then a sub-menu and another sub-menu, and then press a button."
"The way testing is closely tied into the product Backlog has made it more intuitive, or easier to manage the relationship between building out an application and testing it. In other tools, that is more segregated. The way it's designed in Octane, people have said it makes more sense to them, and that it's easier for them to understand their data and to maintain and test their solutions."
"Octane works well with the Jira portfolio to track the project with two methods: Agile and Waterfall. We can track all the testing in Waterfall or Agile and synchronize it with Agile tools."
"Backlog management is the most valuable feature. This was a capability that was missing or difficult to achieve in ALM Quality Center."
"The feature I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its ability to integrate with the CI/CD stack."
"We looked at all the market-leading tools, but we did not find anything quite as comprehensive as ALM Octane. When I say comprehensive, it's not just a single tool for Agile planning, backlog management release, sprint planning, etc., but it also has a built-in, comprehensive quality management module. It also has pipelines where we can hook up with our DevOps ecosystem/toolchain."
"It is a very stable tool. The tool has been in the industry for so many years. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"I have found almost all of the features valuable because it integrates well with your Microsoft products. If a client is using the entire Microsoft platform, then TFS would be definitely preferable. It integrates with the digital studio development environment as well."
"The most valuable feature is integration, particularly if you have a .NET application."
"It is a stable solution."
"This solution enables us to link all items usefully, in the way we use Agile."
"I like the build management features and the integration with Jenkins and many other tools."
"I like its MTM (Microsoft Test Manager) section which gives us options to create various test plans and add test cases into it."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard and task-selection capability."
"The most valuable feature of TFS is the central repository, and you can see what changes other developers did from which branch."
"Technical support can be slow."
"The elements in filtering need to be improved, meaning the number of filters I can use in widgets or in the grid views in parallel. There's a limitation which bothers a lot of our users. Filtering in text, or having a complex filter is limited. In a given field, for example, I can use a filter only once. I cannot say, 'Include the values 1, 2, and 3, and exclude value 17.' This is not possible but we have requested it often."
"The reporting is lacking from a requirements matrix and a traceability perspective."
"We have some requests to beef up the manual testing abilities and the ability to report on testing progress. All the basics are there, but there's an issue of maintainability. For example... once you plan a test and it creates a run, more particularly a suite run, you can't edit the suite run afterward... That that is not realistic with how people work. Mistakes are made and people are humans and we change our minds about things. So the tool needs to allow for a bit more flexibility in that testing area, as well as some better widgets to report on progress."
"The reporting needs to be improved and allow for customization. I want to build my own widgets, but I don't want to use the ones already in the system. I want to build mine from scratch."
"We've only had a few stability issues. Generally, we have issues following any deployment they do, so if they do a deployment on a Sunday, then we may have a couple of issues on a Monday or Tuesday."
"Though Micro Focus ALM Octane doesn't have much of a bug, it lacks integration with some solutions. For example, my company has fairly new software, but it can't be integrated with Micro Focus ALM Octane, so integration with other software, particularly with less popular software, could be improved. Micro Focus ALM Octane also requires a lot of resources during its setup, and I find this another area for improvement. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the ability to customize the interface, especially when doing a manual test."
"The limitation of Octane is that we can't do a release outside of the sprint. We can only plan the release in the sprint. With Agile and JIRA tools, we can plan the release outside the sprint and do a global release of all the projects from the sprint."
"The overall reports in TFS could improve. Additionally, there should be an easier way to migrate from an older version to a newer one."
"It has been really dated. When you start to work more in an agile environment, it is not really that flexible. They tried to replicate the look and feel of Jira, but it is not quite there. It was nice to use in the past, but it is not as flexible now with the changing development environments and methodologies."
"They should have design patterns in TFS for the development team, and design patterns for the QA."
"Sometimes we feel that it need more CPU, and RAMs on TFS server, either we implemented the hardware with the product minimum requirements."
"There are many things that I cannot do, and I have a lot of bugs."
"The user interface could improve and test management was not useful in TFS."
"The tool needs improvement in stability."
"TFS isn't a great tool if you're on the cloud."
OpenText ALM Octane is ranked 5th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 38 reviews while TFS is ranked 3rd in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 93 reviews. OpenText ALM Octane is rated 8.2, while TFS is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of OpenText ALM Octane writes "Reporting engine, widgets, and dashboards are a huge plus, and powerful REST interface means we can interact with other tools". On the other hand, the top reviewer of TFS writes "It is helpful for scheduled releases and enforcing rules, but it should be better at merging changes for multiple developers and retaining the historical information". OpenText ALM Octane is most compared with Jira, OpenText ALM / Quality Center, Microsoft Azure DevOps and Rally Software, whereas TFS is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Jira, Rally Software and TestRail. See our OpenText ALM Octane vs. TFS report.
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