OpenText ALM Octane Reviews

ALM Octane is used to manage our software delivery. Currently, we are running the hybrid mode. We use traditional waterfall delivery as well as agile. 

• For waterfall delivery, it is managed completely. Then, we have our requirements and our test cases to cover those requirements as well as the defects. 
• For agile, we currently have only one team. So, all team activity happens in ALM Octane. Their backlog is broken down into user stories tasks, then covered by the test coverage.

We have installed it on a Windows Server on our systems.

ALM Octane natively supports waterfall, hybrid, and agile software development perfectly at an enterprise scale. 

1. If you look at the Requirement module, then we see all the defects and test cases related to waterfall. 
2. If we look at the Backlog module, we see what the agile team works on. 
3. If you want to see it at the component level, then imagine that we have a CRM system where a release project of waterfall makes a delivery and the agile team also makes a delivery on that component. 
4. We come to the Quality module, where if you select that component, then both streams would be represented there. 
5. If you select in the Quality module components, then we could see that, "Okay, this is linked to the defects from this source and that source. These are test cases covering that." 

This was one of the key aspects of why we took ALM Octane. 

With ALM Octane supporting agile, this reduces complexity and the need to manage multiple tools. We are still working on some automation that would further make us more efficient. So, we are building in-house tools to reduce the manual work.

Our user experience has been greatly improved.

In the current organizational structure, our development teams and testing teams are separate. With this transformation, I think the collaboration will increase, and we are on our way to put these teams closer.

We are very much moving towards DevOps in certain parts of the application. We are starting to develop these microservices and running a proof of concept where we want to integrate our Jenkins pipeline, which builds and deploys the application into Octane. For example, if there is a defect in the content, then what defects are being deployed through this pipeline? Octane really supports DevOps with the Pipeline module using the comment information in the items, along with integration from the IDEs. So, once our PoC is done, then we will utilize the DevOps features.

Currently, we have our hybrid delivery model, where waterfall still is a big part. So, if I look at ALM Octane from the module perspective, we are utilizing this requirement module. We took our day-to-day, grouping them by releases. Our requirements are stored in Confluence and ALM Octane. So, our project managers draw their requirements in Confluence, then we have a synchronization where requirements are brought into ALM Octane. Therefore, from the module perspective, the most valuable feature would be the Requirements module. 

We utilize dashboards for all their reporting capabilities to see where our software is from a quality point of view: test progress, defect trends, and so on. 

We are big fans of the Pipeline module, where we have our automated tests running on Jenkins and our pipeline is integrated into ALM Octane. 

Octane provides multiple plugins and integration with IDEs, so developers don't even need to log into ALM Octane, for certain scenarios. They only need to install the plugin into their development environment, i.e., Eclipse, Visual Studio, or IntelliJ. Then, they can sync their work items to this IDE where they can easily see what defects or user story is assigned to them. They can work directly from there by adding comments, changing the status, or even committing the code. This also applies to the pipeline for Jenkins. 

There are a lot of predefined reports. We can attach additional reports for users, like who worked on what defect and when, as well as what is the status of the release compared to the previous release. It is really endless. All the data is really linked together. Then, if all the data is linked together, there is an option to prepare reports out of it. We are very impressed with its reporting capabilities.

They provide all data integration. So if you have an edge use case, which you cannot do with what the tool provides, then you can set your data through all the protocols and even prepare it for the reports. I think they are very strong in this area.

On a team level, it is really good. We have received only positive feedback from our teams. It is visual, so there are different ways for teams to see their backlog. If they wish, it can be viewed like a list and a board, where you can look at the content per screen, release, or for the whole backlog.

The tool is very intuitive. However, it is still new, so you still need to learn and explore it, but that is a standard thing. Initially, we did receive some questions from teams, "How do I do this?" and, "How do I do that?" However, in very recent times, since it has been up and running, teams have enjoyed the fast, modern, new platform.

For the PoC, we have ALM Octane integrating with our CI server for continuous integration and delivery. We have it integrated with Jenkins. We haven't integrated our other server yet. We are still exploring the solution.

ALM Octane is working to soon provide comment information, so we would really be able to see what piece of code was committed for a user story or feature. We are really looking forward to this, because it's going to give us a bit more traceability and transparency.

They don't support all IDEs yet. We have Visual Studio code, which is not supported, and loved by our developers. This integration is missing. We also had to do our own in-house integration with the Confluence. That is also something that they could add. 

There are small things, like hiding different columns when it comes to the board. Currently, whatever workflow items you have defined in the board, you can collapse them, but a collapse line still appears. These small things would make a difference.

In certain areas, ALM Octane has a limitation how many items can be displayed. So, if I group something, then I'm limited to the number of items which I can see. Also, if I want to export in Excel, there is a limitation onis lines. I know it's 5000. Maybe the number is quite high, but if they could improve on those limits, that would be good.

We did a migration around Midsummer. That was about six months ago.

It is very stable. With our current setup, we haven't seen any performance issues.

Very little maintenance is needed. No one does it full-time. We have five people who have the admin rights, then two people who act as a backup but don't really do anything.

It is scalable. We can add additional nodes without a lot of effort, if it is required. There is an option to scale from a license point of view. From a hardware point of view, we can also add multiple nodes to support additional loads.

We have about 1,000 users. 

We have an excellent guy who helped us with the whole migration project. We have already built a good relationship with him, so much that we don't always go through the official channels. He still takes our questions via email if we need the clarification on certain things. Additionally, the official OpenText support channels are also good. We raised a couple of incidents, which were addressed by the team. 

In the past, we had ALM Quality Center to manage our waterfall deliveries. Once the company took the decision to do the transformation to agile, we needed a tool that could support both waterfall and agile, but not compromise functionality. This was a key factor why we took on ALM Octane. We knew that the transition to agile would not happen overnight and that we might be in the hybrid model for a while, which is the exact reason why we took on ALM Octane.

It is very much integratable. This was a piece that was critical for us because ALM Quality Center was used by our company for more than 10 years, and it was very easy to integrate. Before we could migrate to ALM Octane, we needed the integration to be in place for a new tool. There are different ways to integrate, through the REST API, plugins, or the MF Connect tool, which also comes with ALM Octane.

Because we were coming from a very old Quality Center version, we have become more efficient because the work can be done faster.

The deployment was straightforward. The documentation clearly states the requirements regarding what hardware is required. Additionally, all the installation and deployment guides are good.

The deployment went through phases. First, we installed the system, which was pretty fast. After that, we migrated all the data from Quality Center, which was an additional task.

The upgrade was super fast. We were so impressed. We ran a test first, but after that, it took maybe 90 minutes altogether. That includes the backup of systems. Before the upgrade, we backed up our Elasticsearch because ALM Octane comes with Elasticsearch, and in our case, it runs on Unix machines. So, we backed up Elasticsearch, the data repository for all the attachments, etc., then took a snapshot of the database and the Windows machine, which was the longest part. Some of the snapshots, we did in advance, and some of the snapshots we did just prior to the upgrade. 

We did two upgrades at once because we missed the previous one. The upgrade to 15.1.20 took about 10 minutes, then we did some checks and everything was working fine. We then did the further upgrade to 15.1.40, which was another 10 minutes. 

One person with a bit of hardware knowledge can do the deployment. Because we did a migration project, we had a team of four from release management, but this wasn't our full-time task.

We also had support from OpenText.

The testing team has said that can work more efficiently and that the setup of the testing at the beginning of the release is faster.

We already had Jira in-house, but its testing capabilities were insufficient and not scalable enough for our needs.

Define the process which fits your organization best. Explore the features in the test management and test execution area, then define the process that is best for you because there are a lot of options. Also, when you do create your data, make sure that you connect it to the right items. Because once you put the correct data into the tool, then you can build strong reports. However, the reports are only as strong as the data behind them.

MF Connect, which is a separate tool from OpenText, provides additional data synchronization. With MF Connect, you can synchronize ALM Octane with Excel, Jira, and other tools. We use it for synchronization with Jira. Then, if this doesn't support your needs, there is also the REST API. We use that quite a lot as well. Through the REST API, we connect with things in different solutions.

While our manual testing time has been reduced, it is necessarily true because of ALM Octane. It is more due to a bigger initiative where we have automated our test cases. ALM Octane supports our automation initiative. With the pipelines, we can execute test cases through Jenkins, then the analytics in the pipelines give us a trend to see. For example, are certain test cases constantly failing? Or, do we have a problematic area where we need to strengthen the automated test focus?

ALM Octane would give us information on what exactly went into which release and what exactly needs to be rolled out. For all our test cases that need to be executed for the release, or on the release night, we would hold information within ALM Octane.

We are planning to increase usage in the future. Currently, our other agile teams use Jira. The goal is that if we do not migrate those teams to Jira, then we should at least integrate both those tools together. We would then manage all the agile work within ALM Octane. Also, our organization recently got acquired by another organization, so we are in the process of merging two companies. Therefore, there potentially will be a lot of additional users going forward.

I would rate it as a nine (out of 10).

We use it for Agile: Requirements, backlog, and testing for 80 apps, including SAP and Teamcenter.

Octane provides the platform needed for teams to run Agile projects. Previous tools like ALM QC were modeled for Waterfall methodologies. Metrics are not relevant for us in this case as we are still moving from Waterfall to Agile and hybrid delivery.

Our Waterfall practices have been standardized and templated to provide cross-project metrics and reusable assets, such as tests and other libraries. Our Mobile and Solution Delivery teams are finding Octane provides the CI/CD and DevOps connections with development and infrastructure teams, connections that they had previously managed with brute force tools like SharePoint, Excel, and email.

Backlog management is the most valuable feature. This was a capability that was missing or difficult to achieve in ALM Quality Center.

Octane, from an administration perspective, is very limited. The application is improving with each release but what is missing is the ability to manage users and workspaces. I would also like "usable" reporting for more than a few workspaces. Also still missing is the ability to copy a workspace or get data in or out, except for limited REST calls.

As early adopters, we began using Octane before the ink was dry on the first release. Since the first release, we have seen nothing but added capabilities and feature/functionally improvements. We have not experienced a single instance where something was removed or deprecated. That said, we do find they like to move buttons around and hide things in different drop downs now - but there has never been a loss in capability.

We have projects and teams with several hundreds of users and tens of thousands of records (requirements, tests, etc.). There are risks with not being able to copy a workspace to test changes to the CI/CD or pipelines, so that is a miss. The reporting is limited to a few thousand records so we've had to request an override to the limits - but Micro Focus delivered on this immediately, once we stated the case.

I've worked with the SaaS team and Micro Focus R&D on many aspects for initial setup, bridges, and complex four-system conversions. The technical experts are some of the best I've worked with in more years than I can admit to.

Octane was brought in to be the standard SDLC platform in concert with QC. We replaced VersionOne, Jira, and several in-house solutions since I've been with the company.

We are on SaaS. Setup and deployment were immediate and required no effort on our part, except to make the request. This was also true for staging environments for a PoC.

Initially, our implementation strategy was to enable a trial period of six months to one year. The community response was so overwhelming that we went into a production mode within the first quarter and began setting up and migrating teams within the first year. Even emphasizing that the platform at that time was essentially a PoC, teams adopted it, even with the risks, and never looked back.

We work directly with our Micro Focus CSM. The technical team, including R&D, is first-class.

The only quantifiable ROI is the license cost savings converting from VersionOne and JIRA. With about 200 users for each platform, the ROI calculations are based on what was paid for the previous solutions.

I highly recommend the flex licensing model. With flex, we can ramp up or down to accommodate demand changes for roll-outs or PoCs, etc., as needed. It is especially useful for our performance and load testing areas.

We evaluated solutions from ServiceNow, VersionOne, Jira, and multiple in-house solutions.

My advice, going on my experience to date with Octane, is to be sure you are ready to support the demands for licenses. I have found that once a team gets access, they will not go back to the previous tools and will want to convert everything. Make sure you have guidelines in place on the CoE's expectations so the teams actually use the tools for SDLC and not as a replacement for simple request tracking.

In terms of our biggest lessons learned about adapting tools and processes for Agile and DevOps, building templates and standards that have provided a lot of value in a Waterfall approach do not migrate well to an Agile practice. Previously, we focused on testing, mostly in isolation from requirements and development. Moving to Agile in Octane switched the primary usage to backlog (requirements) focus. The challenge has been to bring focus back to testing and quality delivery in concert with backlog management.

The challenges we faced with ALM Quality Center were the test and defect management capabilities. There was a difficult process in place to track and link requirements and releases. In ALM Octane we are finding the reverse. Requirements management, release, teams, etc. are exceptional, but we are finding the users are less focused on the testing and defect management capabilities.

We have 1,000-plus users using this solution in every role. Most are team members but we have admins and integration teams assigned to every role, including custom roles we've set up. In terms of staff for deployment and maintenance, we are on SaaS. Our CSM manages that side of things.

We have been using Octane since it was released, and maybe a little before that. Octane is a corporate standard and we see no reason to not continue migrating teams - that are ready - from Waterfall tools to Octane. We still support 3,000-plus users in Quality Center who could potentially migrate at some point.

The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services. It can fetch insights about various deposit points after synchronizing with Jira, IBM, or other tools. It gives visualization through dashboards and reports updates quickly and easily.

The product's requirements management feature needs enhancement in terms of functionality. Also, the release management feature needs expansion.

We have been using OpenText ALM Octane for ten years.

I rate the platform's stability a ten out of ten.

I have worked with around 400 OpenText ALM Octane customers. It works well for synchronizing data.

We had a good experience working in the support team's R and D department. However, they could provide more technical resolutions.

Positive

We used HPE Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for a significant amount of time. From a competitive point of view, no comprehensive tools could cover ALM functionalities better than HPE and OpenText. Almost 80% of enterprise companies use OpenText as a well-integrated solution. It doesn't require the technical expertise required to work with open-source tools. Also, it provides good support services.

The initial setup process is straightforward. The platform has well-defined, out-of-the-box workspaces and projects incorporating good practice workflows.

The product is highly priced compared to other tools. However, it offers substantial value. There is a distinction between OEM pricing and the final pricing for customers. They could understand the delta between the two and work towards a favorable outcome.

I rate OpenText ALM Octane a ten out of ten. It is a great product considering ETL and DevOps methodologies. It integrates and synchronizes well with other tools as well. I advise others to understand the business requirements before making a purchase decision.

In my company, I don't specifically work on OpenText ALM Octane, but my team works on it. My company uses OpenText ALM Octane as a test management platform.

Since I work for a software company, we use it for the management of test scenarios, how many tests to run against certain features, what are the test results, how long the resolutions or the fixes take, and when we can stop testing the features. The product helps in terms of collaboration and coordination between different teams.

The most valuable features of the solution are its ability to manage test scenarios, test results, and test automation, which are its primary functionalities.

Improvement-wise, I think that the tool needs to be made more flexible and easy to integrate with the rest of the tools in the SDLC ecosystem. There are some challenges when we want to integrate the tool with other products, and it takes time for a team to figure out how to do it.

I have experience with OpenText ALM Octane for a year and a half. I am a customer of the solution.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I haven't seen any significant requirements in my company regarding the scalability aspect of OpenText ALM Octane.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.

Around 250 people, consisting mostly of QAs and software engineers in my company, work on the solution.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I rate the product's initial setup a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. The product is neither cheap nor expensive.

I don't recall the names of the products my company had evaluated against OpenText ALM Octane in the past. The reason why my company chose OpenText ALM Octane is because we were using Micro Focus in our environment.

I suggest to those planning to use OpenText ALM Octane to ensure that the workflow and the tools that you use can collaborate and integrate with the product.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira. 

Let's say for example, that if you have a DevOps team that is used to Jira, they can continue to use any of the Jira solutions and then have Octane layered on top of it from the business buyer's viewpoint to better use it more effectively.

There is no question that everything can improve.

I like their smart analytics; perhaps they should continue to expand and improve there because it's a fantastic start. And I enjoy the testing, especially the automated testing capabilities, so just keep improving on what they have.

I have been working with Micro Focus ALM Octane for one year.

I am reviewing the latest version.

Micro Focus ALM Octane is a stable solution.

Because of HPE's support, I would feel far more comfortable with Micro Focus.

Micro Focus ALM Octane is a scalable product.

We have approximately 500 clients who are using this solution.

They are large enterprises and digital transformation, IT engineers, more business-oriented than DevOps-oriented.

We have not contacted technical support.

We are working with the Hybrid version, but It even extends to on-premises. It is both the on-premises and cloud versions.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I believe it depends on the circumstance, getting it up and running seems to be rather simple. It appears to be suitable for standing up in a bigger setting.

If I compare it to Jira, for example, and you are in a complex environment, you have to ensure that everything is updated and all of the plugins, and everything works every time there is an update, but you don't have that problem with Micro Focus' Octane.

We received assistance from a third-party consultant.

Because I am making recommendations for a client, I lack firsthand deployment experience. I am merely talking to them and assisting them in making decisions.

My clients have seen a return on investment. I can't quantify it for you, but they believe that because it is cohesive and can be used across the enterprise in a simplified manner, it reduces the total cost of ownership, which might be translated into a return on investment.

In my opinion, it's good value for the price that you pay.

I have some experience with Jira and Micro Focus ALM Octane, but I am mostly reviewing them to give a recommendation for a client.

I would suggest reviewing it thoroughly to make sure that it is a good fit for your environment.

I believe it works well in a variety of settings, but like with any solution, some are more suited to some situations than others. I believe it is trustworthy, reputable, and scalable.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Octane an eight out of ten.

Its user experience made us a lot happier than using other tools, making it easier for non-IT teams to work together with IT teams.

Octane provides us with a single platform for all automated testing. Our test management is a lot more transparent and successful because it includes the team (the non-IT user and the developers). We are more streamlined and running a lot faster. The single platform for all automated testing has 100 percent affected collaboration between development and testing teams because everything is all in one place.

Octane integrates with your CI server for continuous integration and delivery. This makes us go faster, providing overall transparency during stages or phases.

The solution provides a single, global ALM platform that supports all our agile and waterfall needs. This has improved the overall quality of our DevOps by a lot.

The user experience is a lot better than any tool that I have used before. Overall, it is great. It has a smooth interface, which is very user-friendly. It makes it easier to work together and have more transparency and customization, which is very good. There are a lot of features where you can add fields, input individual fields, and input rules, like templated rule-based interaction between entities. 

The Backlog management is really interesting, because it is all in one place. You don't have a feature here and a feature there, instead you have the Backlog and testing using different backup items, like user storage features and tasks, all in one place. In addition, we are able to write documents, which we can transfer to backup items. Then, we can test them in the same solution without switching tools, or even switching from one part of the tool to another part, because it is all in one place.

We use the solution’s Backlog and Team Backlog capabilities. They make our DevOps processes easier through transparency and asset collaboration.

It could use just some small improvements. I would like additional features, like planning features, user story mapping, or connection to collaboration tools. 

We have been using it for two years in a client company. We have also used it for several of our teams as well as IT related product development.

We have used it now for two years, but only in the last six to 12 months have we really been going all in.

The stability is perfect. We haven't had any issues.

We are not using the most recent version. There are two more updates, and we are already thinking about updating to the newest version.

The scalability is excellent. I don't think there is a limit.

We use it quite extensively. We have about 30 teams working on it with approximately 10 projects, and we are definitely expanding.

The technical support is really good. I would rate their support as a nine out of 10, as there is always room for improvement.

We do use the community that is offered. This is a very good point for identifying issues in terms of how we can use additional features.

We switched from Jira. The main reasons that we switched to Octane:

1. Provides a single tool.
2. A lot smoother user experience.

The initial setup was absolutely perfect and very easy. It was fast getting into the work. We were up and running in a very short amount of time. We switched from one tool to another in days, which is very good. 

We did it ourselves. Just a couple of people were involved in the deployment.

Octane has reduced manual testing time in our organization.

The solution has reduced our testing costs.

It has reduced integration costs by building a streamlined application delivery pipeline connecting to all IDE, CI, and SCCM tools.

The solution has helped us to produce releases faster. 

We did not really evaluate other options. We were introduced to Octane and found it to be a good idea.

OpenText ALM Octane natively supports waterfall, hybrid, and agile software development at an enterprise scale. There is no difference based on whatever path that you are trying to follow. You have work, and if you do it in cycles and iterations, that's fine. If you don't, that is fine too.

The solution provides out-of-the-box integrations to proprietary, third-party, and open source tools. However, we are not using DevOps integration right now.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10. 

We are only using the Quality testing module of Octane to test newly developed mobile solutions or changes. For example, if someone wants to deploy a new promotion of a cheap bundle for 1 GB of 50 ram. Once that goes through the project management and comes to us, we use mostly these three Octane modules: Backlog, Quality, and Pipelines. 

My team has benefited a lot from this solution. Sometimes it can be a massive, gigantic project where it's a migration from one system to another. Because we already have the requirements and the test kit setup on the system, it is easy for us to run regression.

The solution natively supports Agile-Waterfall hybrid software development at an enterprise scale. This is very important to us. Because even though the company wishes to go Agile, we still have projects which follow a Waterfall methodology. In order for us to accommodate both, we needed some sort of hybrid system. Because if we are using a fully Agile system, then the reporting might not be correctly extracted.

At the end of the day, teams are able to collaborate because we are working on one thing. One person can do their part of the job, then another person picks from there and carries on. So, it runs as a smooth process.

Even though there are other people who are not using the system, if we would give them access to the project management, then they would be able to trace where we are at any point in time.

I like that most tests are usable. I can parameterize, then use that test and pass a new value.

Its ability to handle a large number of projects is very good. I can just cross-reference and reuse what was existing before, instead of moving from one browser or application to another.

Octane's ability to connect all related entities to reflect project status and progress is great because even our team who runs external tests from Jenkins that the reporting is centralized. Because it was run from within Octane, the results come back into Octane. However, since I am not using those external systems, I only get results whether the test passed or failed.

The solution provides us with a single platform for all automated testing. It combines everything so someone doesn't have to look into many systems to be able to check this or that. They only have to log into one system to check for a particular requirement.

Backlog is like a library of our tests. It contains the features linked to the tests, so you can see which project or feature that you are working on. It is all in one place and everyone who needs it has access to it.

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.

From the database point of view along with how we see the reporting, they use old data. Also, there are sometimes limitations due to their license restrictions. If we want to share our tests with other teams, extracting different tests out of the system, those tests come out as a script where the content will be something like a binary format type of text.

We started using Octane from February 2020. 

I do not know whether it is because we used an existing server, but sometimes the solution would be slow. Nowadays, it's much better because not as many people are logging into the system. However, I find it slow. When you capture a requirement or test (and it throws out an error), then when you refresh and find that it has created a duplicate. For some people who don't understand it, Octane can create a lot of useless information on the system.

My team does just minor maintenance of the solution.

The extensiveness of integrations into the DevOps ecosystem in the 15.1.20 version to support scalability has been very applicable to our business. We have integrated the solution with Jenkins, which was user-friendly. We also integrated Octane with Qlik Sense and QlikView for people for whom we do not want to give access to the system but want to have them viewing our reports. Therefore, I think the scalability is very wide. 

On my team, there are 18 users who are testers. Overall, there are 20 licenses.

We have used the technical support, and they are very good. 

There was a time that the server firewall was enabled, so we could not access the system from our side. Since we were working from home and connecting remotely, no one was able to establish regular shipping. Eventually, the IT person and our team went through everything. They checked the server settings and pinpointed the problem. 

We did an upgrade of our ALM from Quality Center.

Our team is saving time on testing by using Octane. Something that would take five days to do, now it takes one day.

The solution has helped us to produce releases 40 percent faster. 

Going forward, I think we will want to explore adding more licenses.

We have used more of a requirement-driven tool, where it will help you to identify which requirement already exists. Then, you don't capture duplicates and it directs you to the project that is linked to that particular requirement. 

We also use Jira at a high level for projects.

We don't use the security features of this solution yet, but it is something that my boss wants us to tap into.

Systems and technologies are evolving as well as methodologies.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.

We're using it for test management, to write test cases and we have put it into an overall approach which is called BDD, Behavior-Driven Development. Within BDD we're using Octane to manage all tests, to plan and do test automation. We're doing test automation with IntelliJ, together with TestCafe, which is a pretty nice test-automation tool. We have Jenkins with a pipeline connected to Octane, working the whole process. 

The main intent is to have a quality solution. Our development is working in JIRA, which means that we have split it. We import user stories from JIRA to Octane and start working from there on our testing.

We started from scratch because we didn't have any BDD approach. We used a more old-fashioned method of development, more Waterfall and so on. We were looking for a solution which would be a good tool for our new methodology. For us, this was a key benefit from Octane, to get rid of the old style. We are implementing Agile methodologies in DevOps, that's the main thing. We try to use shift left to test much earlier and therefore it's really helpful to have Octane and to implement the new approach with it.

The most valuable feature of Octane, in comparison to ALM, is the whole Agile approach, that we can run it with the sprints and have it better connected to the whole development process.

The other feature is the pipeline, so that we can now connect to Jenkins and then have all the results from testing, from external, in the tool, so that we can see the whole approach from there.

Many things are nice so it's hard to say what is best; for example, the way it's organized. We can work with labels so we have better filtering solutions than in ALM. And it's much smarter and leaner to use than ALM.

There is a lot of room to implement new things. I would like to have more possibilities for doing test automation directly in Octane or to see UFT scripts within Octane. The implementation within ALM of UFT was much better than in Octane because I can only see the results from our test runs in Octane, but not the test itself. With Gherkins in there, that's fine, but I do not really have a hand on the scripts themselves. I can follow the pipeline jobs in Jenkins, but I can't see what's really happening there. So I would like to have some more information about that in Octane.

Also, while there is a Requirements Module in Octane, it is very plain. It's okay to have some requirements described there, but it's not really following the whole BDD approach. I would like to have more features for requirements in there; not as much as in ALM because in ALM it was a mess, it was too much.

There is a whole lot of room to improve.

It's very stable. Over the last one-and-a-half years, we have really not had an issue. It's fine. We only have a handful of people who are working with it so far, but for them and for us it's okay. 

We have a very small team. Some are working from Croatia and we have a team here. We have a maximum of three or four concurrently using it. In the future, we will have many more. For the moment it's a pilot, but as a pilot, it's working fine.

Tech support is very good. We are in direct contact with the guys from Tel Aviv and it's very good. We're in touch by phone, email, and we have sessions together with them. It's much better than it was with HPE, in my opinion.

It could be, because we are a pilot project and one of the first here in Germany, that we have more direct contact. But this is working. I really like it.

We figured out that with our BDD approach, and what we planned with more modern technologies, and our shift-left approach, that ALM didn't fit. There was no chance to implement any Agile approach in ALM. We started to think about what else could be useful. It was pretty obvious that Octane was the right tool.

In ALM you do not have any flexibility to model the processes, to say how you would like to see new things like quality stories. With Octane you can add pipelines, and with the API you can add other tools and, therefore, other processes. All of that is not available in ALM. In ALM, you have a closed system and you have to live with what is given, while in Octane, you have the chance to add new stuff to the tool, like reports from outside, etc.

It was really straightforward. It was a pleasure to implement our approach with it, compared to ALM or to the older tools. It was really easy. I started from zero with Octane. I had never seen it before. It was brand new and I really learned it on my own, everything in there, including the setup and how to implement the processes, etc.

In terms of maintaining it, right now it's just one person. Once we scale it, I don't expect it will take many more people to maintain it because it's very easy to maintain. If it's set up well there shouldn't be too much work to do there. For the technical parts, we will still need only one person and, within the project - depending on the number of projects - we will need, perhaps, one guy who's taking care of it from time to time.

We have had some strong discussions in regards to JIRA, to use JIRA plug-ins and to get rid of the overall HPE/Micro Focus way, because of the money. We had some discussions about whether we could make it with open-source tools. But at the end of the day, we figured out that they're really not good, full test-management tools. The overall approach, with everything in one place in Octane, for the money, is more valuable.

Since we're not finished with the license discussions, I can't tell you the end result or numbers and figures but, in the end, it's more or less equal, from the money point of view: if you're using open-source with more consulting or if you use a tool like Octane, which costs some money, but you don't have a lot of work in terms of implementing and consulting, etc.

I don't deal with licensing and pricing, but it's worth the money, from my point of view, because it's very good. But that's all I can say about that.

We looked at a few. One we're still having look at is Xray but doesn't fit with our BDD approach. We also looked at ServiceNow. That's mainly for ticketing systems but they also showed us something about test management. It was very close to ALM, to the old way, so it was also not very useful for our process. Our support is working with ServiceNow but it doesn't fit with our project.

Think about your processes and the methods you're using for development and quality management and see if the tool fits. If yes, it could be a good idea to use Octane. I have presented Octane many times within our company and outside of the company, and I have had very good feedback and many questions about whether it is useful or not. "Can you really say it's the perfect tool?" Mostly I have said to them it's really good. If you work in Agile and if you work in BDD and Gherkin, I think it's the best tool on the market.

I have a pretty long history in testing. I started in 1999 and, since then, I have worked with all these products from HPE or, now, Micro Focus. I know all the history and the older tools and I'm really pretty happy that we have a tool now which is working in a more modern way, in a good, Agile way. It's pretty nice.

With respect to how our tools and processes are evolving to adapt to the change from traditional Waterfall development, for requirements we do not have a good tool to work with, but we have Octane for testing, we have JIRA for development, and we still have ALM for defect tracking and for working together with the other teams that are still working in the Waterfall process. So for synchronizing of defects, we are connected to ALM. We have IntelliJ for development, and we use it together with Cucumber and TestCafe for test automation. We have Git for all our results and for version control. We have Jenkins, as mentioned before and, for reporting, we are mainly using Octane. This is the overall tool landscape we have.

The biggest lesson about adapting to Agile for DevOps is that it is really important to have APIs, to have open interfaces to connect all of these tools together; to have the chance to implement the pipeline easily. We are no longer bound to only HPE or Micro Focus tools. We can work together with open-source tools. It was easy to implement such things in Octane. This was a great lesson.

For our releases, we still have a Waterfall approach. We have a live release every three months. It was a little bit tricky to put together the testing for Agile and for Waterfall so that we could do the quality assurance for both approaches in one tool. I've found a way that I can have sprints over a longer time for the UAT, using Octane. We have 40-day sprints and testing in one tool. It was really nice to have found a way to have them in one tool. This was also a good lesson, to see that both can work in one tool.

There's room for more features but, for a relatively new tool, it's very good. I would rate it at seven out of ten. If the features and enhancements we have requested come through, it will be a ten in the future. Given the maturity of the tool, that it's only one-and-a-half or two years old, seven is a very good number. I can give it a 10 when the Requirements Module is working better and when some other things are solved, some problems with implementation that need work. Then it will be a ten.