IT Central Station’s crowdsourced user review platform helps technology decision makers around the world to better connect with peers and other independent experts who provide advice without vendor bias.
Our users have ranked their solutions according to their valuable features, and have also discussed where they see room for improvement. You can read user reviews for the top 6 ALM suites from Q1 2017 here, to help you decide which solution is best for you.
Users compare and give feedback on the application lifecycle management suites that they’ve used — based on product reviews, ratings, and comparisons.
#1 JIRA
JIRA is ranked by our users as the number one ALM suite of Q1 2017, but what do users really think of the solution?
“The SaaS does the job it is supposed to: helps you keep track of your projects.”
Aimee White, Website and EComm at a retailer with 1,000-5,000 employees, shares:
“What I like most is the ease of adding users and the obvious nature of what they need to do – drag and drop is always a win.
It is cross-methodology so Scrum, Kanban… it doesn’t matter, you can use JIRA.
I like how it shows the sprints remaining. Being able to instantly see where you are in a project and what is coming up is invaluable.
Also, the ability to link a program of projects is very helpful. I can see where all of the teams are with their individual projects but also how they fit into the overarching business plan for the year.”
“Better JIRA Agile integration and more functionality related to JIRA Agile plugin”
Mehmet Kazgan, CEO at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees, explains that “Collaboration and software development lifecycle were the 2 keys that JIRA served great for. We have multiple organizations in the company already using JIRA for tracking projects.”
With that, Kazgan would like to see “better JIRA Agile integration” and “more functionality related to JIRA Agile plugin.”
#2 HPE ALM
The IT Central Station community ranks HPE ALM as the number two ALM suite for Q1 2017.
“Centralization of our testing artifacts is probably the biggest benefit.”
Doug Brown, VP of IT Application Services at a company with 1,000-5,000 employees, describes that HPE ALM “provides a central repository for all our testing artifacts and documentation.
We use it not only to keep everything centrally housed, but it is also great for answering audits. That is our biggest use of this product.”
Brown continues to explain that at his company, “We have a disjointed arena with a lot of different legacy applications and new applications that are being built. We need a central house to store all our procedures, documents etc. and ALM is the tool for doing all that.”
“We need more qualified people to take first-line support.”
Ole Kramer, Director at Scott/Tiger – Test & Quality Management, speaks of HPE ALM’s current technical support offering as needing improvement:
“Our customers do not generally use HPE support very often, and therefore it’s a bit awkward for them to get started with it. They find it pretty difficult…when you finally get to someone to talk to, and then they’re not qualified.
So we instruct our customers, if that happens to you, you should say immediately that I want to escalate this to a duty manager, who can then take charge…We need more qualified people to take first-line support.”
#3 Microsoft TFS
TFS is ranked by our users as the number three ALM suite of Q1 2017.
“A great tool to manage Agile projects”
Describing TFS as “a great tool to manage Agile projects”, Raúl Lendinez Álvarez, Head of Department Projects at Pasiona, shares the difference he’s seen at his company since using TFS in place of Microsoft Project and Excel:
“Before TFS, we used Microsoft Project and Excel to manage project tasks and release dates (only the Project Manager could do this). Since we adopted Scrum as a part of software development, we needed an agile tool to perform this task.
TFS it is a great tool to manage Agile projects because the whole team is kept up to date with TFS burndown charts, release dates and so on, so we eliminated the need for Project.”
“You have to spend a lot of time making customizations”
Álvarez speaks of the need to customize application developments as a point that could use improvement:
“Continuous integration in most of .NET developments (web and desktop applications) is easy to configure.
But in the case of other kinds of developments (SharePoint or Xamarin), it’s not so easy, you have to spend a lot of time making customizations.
It would be nice to have some integration tools for this kind of projects.”
#4 CA Agile Central
The IT Central Station community ranks CA Agile Central as the number four ALM suite for Q1 2017.
“The ability to instantly see what my team status is and to quickly find out about roadblocks to existing tasks is very valuable.”
Mostafa Badreldin, Validation Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,000+ employees, discusses the value of CA Agile Central’s “iteration status tracking” feature.
Badreldin finds that “The ability to instantly see what my team status is and to quickly find out about roadblocks to existing tasks is very valuable.”
“Few customization options”
Erick Maldonado, Project Lead at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees, shares that CA Agile Central has “few customization options.
For instance, the workflow for story cards cannot be changed out of the box from the standard (Defined, In-Progress, Completed and Accepted). However, this will not be a big problem for most organizations that follow a standard scrum framework.”
#5 HPE Agile Manager
HPE Agile Manager is ranked by our users as the number five ALM suite of Q1 2017.
“The business, developers and QA now have a central location to track their progress as one team”
Jonathan Graham, a Senior Configuration / SQA Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 1,000-5,000 employees, writes:
HPE Agile Manager “provides visibility on the progress of backlog item completions for sprints and the impact progress is having on the overall release date.
The release forecasting allows the team to make adjustments to sprint content in order to ensure we meet dates.
Integration with HPE ALM/QC, Jenkins, and Subversion allows us to view the project’s health through one product.”
As a result, Graham explains, “The business, developers and QA now have a central location to track their progress as one team, rather than three silo teams.”
“The biggest challenge we have is around integrations”
An IT Product Support Manager at a retailer with 1,000-5,000 employees discusses HPE Agile Manager’s integrations as a point for improvement:
“Most of the enhancement requests we have are minor, but the biggest challenge we have is around integrations. Defects seem to integrate well; however, we are still trying to figure out how to get requirements to integrate with how we set up ALM.”
#6 Parasoft Development Testing Platform
The IT Central Station community ranks Parasoft Development Testing Platform as the number six ALM suite for Q1 2017.
“Customizable dashboards show how healthy the project is”
Raphael Teodoro, Partner/Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees, points to two of Parasoft Development Testing Platform’s valuable features:
- Customizable dashboards show how healthy the project is
- Task distribution, so every team member gets notified about their performance and no one gets lost in what to do.
“More plugins”
Teodoro then adds that he “would like to see more plugins to import from universal tools.”
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