OpenText ALM Octane Reviews

We use Micro Focus ALM Octane for test management.

The feature I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its ability to integrate with the CI/CD stack.

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.

My company just implemented Micro Focus ALM Octane, so my experience with it is less than a month. My team is still in the exploration phase with Micro Focus ALM Octane.

So far, Micro Focus ALM Octane has been pretty stable.

Micro Focus ALM Octane is a scalable solution.

Support for Micro Focus ALM Octane is pretty responsive, but in terms of resolving the problem, that takes time. Issue resolution usually takes more than a day and sometimes a week.

On a scale of one to five, I'm rating Micro Focus ALM Octane support a three.

We only used Micro Focus ALM Octane.

The initial setup for Micro Focus ALM Octane was pretty straightforward, but its infrastructure requirement needs improvement because you need a lot of resources to set up Micro Focus ALM Octane.

It only took a day to complete the software installation, but for the infrastructure, that's my main obstacle because it's resource-heavy.

My team implemented Micro Focus ALM Octane.

I'm unable to share the licensing cost of Micro Focus ALM Octane because that's confidential information.

I have familiarity with Micro Focus ALM Octane because I'm currently using it. I'm using the latest version of the solution.

As it's only been a month since Micro Focus ALM Octane was implemented, only three people use it within my company, in particular, administrators and engineers.

For the deployment and maintenance of Micro Focus ALM Octane, one experienced person is sufficient.

My company has plans to expand Micro Focus ALM Octane usage.

I'm still not sure if I'd recommend Micro Focus ALM Octane to others because I'm still exploring it.

I'm rating Micro Focus ALM Octane as seven out of ten because other products have better integration with open-source solutions versus Micro Focus ALM Octane.

I'm a customer of Micro Focus ALM Octane.

What we're doing is a cloud migration program. We're migrating about 70 applications from on-premise centers to the Amazon Cloud. That migration is primarily using Octane to store manual test cases and for a manual backlog of user storage to migrate each application. We're also using Octane to record the results of automated testing and performance testing.

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. We've never done that before, until this past year. Whether that was possible with Quality Center or ALM.NET, I really don't know, but it's the first time we've ever done this. So the fact that it gives us that window into all phases of testing is where it's a bonus for us.

The whole thing is geared towards Agile deliveries. It certainly has a good GUI, it's good to look at. The features provide good impact. It lends itself very well to Agile deliveries.

So far the stability has been okay. The stability is: Is the server up and running? In the last year we lost access, maybe once, for a couple of hours. Because it's a SaaS product, we don't know why it came down. We just know that it became unavailable to us. But on the whole, it's been pretty stable. We're not intense users just yet. We will be. In six months' time, we won't be able to afford any downtime really. But we're not an intense user right at this moment.

We may have not noticed when it wasn't available. But in six months' time, that story will change. Obviously, as part of our DevOps pipeline, we will really expect it to be up 99.9999 percent of the time.

In that one occurrence, they reacted quite quickly. We raised a ticket and then had an instant response. They said, "We're looking at it." I can't remember what the actual resolution was. I find Micro Focus quite reactive to issues.

I think it would scale. We've not needed to scale too much yet, but it seems scalable to me.

I think that the biggest obstacle to scaling with this particular tool is the licensing. You predict what licensing you need for the year, a whole year, and you're stuck with that for that year, unless you pay more to scale up. That's always a challenge. The challenge is not the scalability of the solution but the scalability of licenses.

We've just upped our licenses to 25. We started off with ten. Once we get to steady state, in some six months' time, we'll have about 30 steady-state silences.

Regarding the increase in usage, we'll push more work through it. Right at this moment it's just one program of work. Once we're happy with the way we use it, the stability, we'll then push all our organization's work through Octane, rather than ALM.NET. At the moment, the majority of our work is going through ALM.NET. It's just this transformation program that I mentioned where we're using Octane. It's almost a proof of concept for us. If it works with that program, we'll make it work for all programs.

Tech support is okay. So far our experience with them has been positive. They're certainly quite quick to react to the initial issue. Because they've got this "follow-the-clock, follow-the-sun" support model, there have been times when we have raised a ticket and has gone over to a resolving group in South America, and there has seemed to be a time lag in getting our updates. That can be a problem but, because we're not an intensive user yet, I'm not sure if that would manifest itself a major problem.

The initial response seems to be good, but sometimes the follow-up is not quite as quick as you'd like it to be.

When we've asked for details, we've received details. They don't seem to hold too much back. When we've pushed them for detail, we've gotten it.

We were working with Micro Focus on our cloud transformation program. We included them and a lot of vendors, but we had identified the Micro Focus set of tools as the tools we should be using for our DevOps pipeline. That was made through a process of evaluation of other tools. At that point, we engaged Micro Focus and said, "Look, this is what we want to do. How can you help us?" At that time, Octane was just coming off the production line and they said, "Well, we've got this new product which might work better for you." They made that product available to us. So we looked at it at that the suggestion of Micro Focus, given that this new product was coming out.

We'd always had what used to be HPE before it was Micro Focus, so we'd always used the variations of HPE testing tools, ALM.NET and, prior to that, Quality Center. We did some research with industry reviews and, obviously, the Micro Focus set of tools were in the top quadrant. Because we had the relationship anyway with Micro Focus we decided to stick with that toolset.

It was a natural progression, plus the fact that the review sites had the set of tools in the top quarter for being the most integrated set of test tools. We were looking beyond test management tools. We were looking at automation and performance, and the recommendation from those sites was that Micro Focus had the richest set of integrated test tooling. That led our thinking quite a lot.

I thought the initial setup was pretty straightforward for us. We started off with ALM.NET on-premise. We then took the SaaS offering. So our initial challenge was to migrate our existing ALM.NET projects into the SaaS product. We then were made aware of Octane, which was made available to us quite easily, and we were able to start using it.

What we didn't do, because of various challenges with our program, was we didn't really get too involved early because we weren't ready. So although the tool was ready, we weren't ready to consume it. But in the last few months, we've made quite a few strides with that. We're now at the stage where we need to say, "What more can give this give us?" There's a lot we can do. What is it we want to do? That's probably where we are now.

Our implementations strategy for Octane was quite simple. Because we've got this program of work, which is a cloud transformation program, we used that program as a proof of concept with Octane. That program worked, which is lifting and shifting 70 business applications. They are being migrated from on-premise to cloud, and each one of those migrations, on an application-by-application basis, is being managed by Octane. So our implementation strategy was to use it for this program of work. Once we realized the good and the bad, we could then start implementing it across the rest of the organization.

The staff from our side required for deployment was none. For us, it was just a request to Micro Focus and then agreeing to pay for licensing. It's a URL, basically.

For administration within our organization, the overhead is that there are several admin tasks, such as creating new backlogs, creating users, and administering users. It's no more of an overhead than with any other test management tool. The admin side is still the same. You have to set up your folder structures, you have to set up the users, you have to disable users when they leave the organization. It's simplistic and it's quite easy.

Here, because we're quite a small organization, we've got three people with admin rights, and between them they handle requests as they come through. We've got a site admin and a project admin. It's a layered type of admin, as much as it was in the previous products. The site admin can do everything and project admin can do everything within that project.

The product was there for us. As soon as we requested it, it was made available, so there was no implementation, as such, for the product. It was down to us to make use of it, and start creating our backlogs, and our structures, etc.

We relied on the help we get from Micro Focus. There are some good online video tutorials from Micro Focus. We made use of those. We made use of Help topics on the product. Other than that, for any issues, we would raise a ticket with Micro Focus. We didn't actually take on formal consultancy.

I don't think we've reached the point of ROI yet. For return on investment, we're looking at about 12 to 18 months before we start seeing that return. Our return will come when we automate more testing, when we show those results in Octane, and start making more use of the Octane dashboard. That's when we'll see a return on investment.

It's expensive. HPE products, and now Micro Focus, have always been expensive. The license is not cheap, and it will always be a challenge, particularly for small organizations like ours.

It's a good product. You need to consider the cost of it. We didn't do too much comparison against other tools, but I always felt that this product didn't only give you a project view, it gave you a program view as well, which some of the other tools don't. With this tool, you've got a program. You can see multiple programs. If you set up your dashboards correctly, you can get a much wider organizational view. That's where we need to play a bit more with it, to get more out of that capability.

I would advise others to consider the expense, maybe look at other tools, to see if they can do what they want to do cheaper. For us, we felt it was worth the investment.

I don't think we're quite mature enough yet to be able to say that it has improved our workflow. Where we are now, we've proved the integration points, we know how we can use the tool, we know how it can benefit us. But what we haven't done is actually reaped the benefits of that just yet. But in six months' time, we'll see improvements to our workflows and we'll be making more use of the tool for that aspect. We're quite immature in our journey at the moment. Although we've had the tool for a year, we haven't started to use it in anger until the last few months, where we've input all those integration points. Now we've got a set of integrations where we can do exactly what we want to do and now we need to decide how best to use that to improve our workflow, etc.

We're introducing an automated pipeline. Our end-to-end DevOps pipeline starts with ServiceNow, where we will request an environment. That request will be picked up by Jenkins, go off to the Amazon cloud, and stand up that environment. Jenkins will then orchestrate a set of automated tests, using UFT, to make sure that environment is working, and it will pass results back to Octane. At that point, a notification goes back into ServiceNow to tell the requester that, "Your environment is available, and it's been delivered." That's the kind of pipeline we're delivering for each application that we might write. In theory, we'll automate as much of that pipeline as possible. We are on that DevOps journey. It's still a work in progress for us.

Regarding the biggest lessons learned so far from adapting tools and processes for Agile and DevOps, I think it's the culture, spreading the culture within your organization. Some people don't like change, they don't like new ways of working. So the cultural issue, the people issue, is a challenge. 

When it comes down to tools and technology, it's the integration points; doing some proofs of concepts to prove each integration point works and finding out where your limitations are. We found some limitations in what we want to do on the Amazon cloud, which we weren't prepared for. The lessons learned for me are: We should've done many, many proofs of concept, small proofs of concept, to prove each point of integration, and then bring all those small proofs of concept together. If I was to do this again, that's exactly what I would do: small proofs of concepts before trying to build anything in an end-to-end fashion.

In terms of how Application Lifestyle Management Tools can help with the transition from Waterfall to Agile, Octane was created very much with that Agile focus. It gives you that set of tools to create the environment, to create your backlog, to create your sprint, and to give cadence to that and give a reporting view of where you are at. Also, it's not just at the project level, you can do it at the program level. We need to start looking at things from a program level, and how we can expand out. It's the views it's giving you, and the tooling that it's giving you that fully support that Agile-type delivery. We've made it work for a Waterfall-type delivery as well. It's giving you everything you need, for whatever delivery you want: the project view and the program view.

I work for a state government in the United States. So our business constituents have departments that use it. And we have analysts who build business cases in the ALM Octane for specific tasks or specific projects that we're working on. We create business rules for each project in ALM Octane. Then, when the developers finish coding and we're getting ready to test, we use ALM Octane again to test against the business rules we created. So that way, we know we're meeting our business objectives, our customer's requests, and what they want to be changed in our system.

It's more streamlined because we have it all under one umbrella. And once the business requirements and rules have been created, we can do test cases and apply them to the business rules. So we're able to make sure that the developers' code is tested thoroughly to meet the needs of the business.

It would help us if ALM Octane got FedRAMP-certified, so our government departments could use the cloud solution. That way our external consultants could access it. We've created a URL to get to it, but if it were FedRAMP-certified and service and had support in the continental United States, that would be better. In the government space, we need organizations or companies to be FedRAMP-certified, and the system must reside in the continental United States. The Micro Focus help desk and their environment are not located in the continental United States, so they do not meet the state's criteria for us to be on the cloud. I understand that the company is working on some FedRAMP certifications and is looking to do that because they cannot put all of their government customers in their cloud environment. It's not a technology issue. It's a security issue.

So we've been using Micro Focus for almost four years now, but we just recently migrated to Octane back in July of this year.

ALM Octane is very scalable. We have a great server team that we use to increase its space or size. We handle it internally, but it works great. 

We have worked with Micro Focus support, and they're very good. I'd say 9 or 10 out of 10. They're always available. And if they don't know how to fix an issue, they know to talk to. It may not be the person you're talking to or the person they've referred them to, but they know somebody who could help. So they know how to escalate within their organization.

So before July, we were using IBM DOORS Next Generation for business requirements.  Then we decided to consolidate the business requirements, testing, and defect management into one system, and Octane provided that solution for us. So we were able to decommission IBM DOORS Next Generation for business requirements after our July implementation to ALM Octane.

We looked at Micro Focus ALM minus the Octane solution about two years before they decided to go with DOORS Next Generation. And they selected DOORS Next Generation, but IBM's integration with Micro Focus wasn't very mature. So it required a lot of manual tinkering to get the two systems to talk together. Finally, after some analysis about how much time was being spent, staffing resources, etc., we just went with ALM Octane.

Setting up ALM Octane is straightforward because we were already using Micro Focus ALM for testing. We were implementing it in the business requirements area. That was four years ago, so I can't remember exactly how long it took, but it was a few months. I'd say maybe two to three months. We did it on our own with Micro Focus guiding us. And Micro Focus had a statewide user base at the time. Other departments were using it, so we were able to share what everyone was doing. I have two FTEs. One is in charge of the business requirements module, and the other oversees the test testing and defect management.

I think the cost of ALM Octane is comparable to other solutions. It's actually a little less than DOORS Next Generation, but I don't have the numbers in front of me.

I rate MicroFocus ALM Octane eight out of 10. It's a great product. If you want to integrate your business requirements with your testing and defect-management tracking, it works beautifully.

One use case was for development life cycle management for a pool of developers using it in an Oracle and .NET development environment.

One of the benefits is the integration with different platforms. Having the defect management, and being able to relate defects and testing to the initial user requirements—having this complete life cycle—is one of the major advantages with Octane. It's the "life cycle" way of thinking that the solution provides. That is a very important component of Agile and DevOps. Octane integrates with your CI server for continuous integration and delivery. This "life cycle" approach gives us end-to-end visibility.

It also provides a single platform for all automated testing and that definitely helped facilitate the testing, the test scenarios, and collaboration between the test team and the development team. Having both together on a single platform allows us to ease the integration between the different teams. One of the major things we talk about regarding Agile, and one of the major components we talk about regarding DevOps, is this seamless integration between the teams.

In addition, it gives you a single, global ALM platform that supports all your Agile and Waterfall needs. One of the big challenges for DevOps is the adoption of a tool among the teams. The fact that the tool facilitates and supports this definitely helps the adoption.

ALM Octane also reduced testing costs overall. It's hard to say exactly how much, but I would estimate by 20 percent. It also definitely reduced integration costs by building a streamlined application delivery pipeline connecting to all IDE, CI, and SCCM tools. In this case the integration costs were reduced by 20 to 30 percent. Finally, it helped to produce releases faster, again by about 20 percent.

The valuable features start from the defect management in the life cycle and go into the part for versioning control.

The defect management gives us full-fledged capabilities for handling defects, including capturing the details of the defects and even screenshotting the defect cases. The defect management is comprehensive. 

Also the integration capabilities with other development platforms we were using was helpful. The out-of-the box integrations are definitely a big part of making Octane comprehensive when it comes to DevOps quality management. It is full of features and gives us flexibility to provide the needed integrations with different platforms.

The solution natively supports Waterfall, Hybrid, and Agile software development at enterprise scale. That's very important because there is a big shift going on from the Waterfall environment into Agile in DevOps. Having a tool that can give us both practices was important.

In addition, Octane's Agile support is good at both the team and the portfolio levels. It has dedicated capabilities for Agile and is very flexible and comprehensive in these two areas.

Security and security management, meaning the integration of the security, could be enhanced. We know about Fortify, but it would be better to have security features in the original Octane platform without the need for another solution or another application.

We've been implementing solutions with OpenText ALM Octane since 2016.

From the stability perspective it's okay.

We did not stress-test it to see what it would be like in a mega environment. Usually we deployed it in a medium-sized environment, with 20 to 30 developers, and the scalability was okay.

I would rate technical support for the solution at six out of 10. Usually there is a lack of connection among the teams for handing over support cases. You often need to do or redo some work whenever support cases are opened. If it is handed over to a new engineer, you need to start doing things over from the very beginning. You have to explain things again.

The initial setup of Octane was straightforward. Because you are talking about development and software developers, it's not like a normal tool for business users. It was not complicated for people to get along with the tool and use it and integrate it.

Usually, deployment takes, on average, a maximum of two months. The deployment plan definitely depends on what the current technologies are, the integrations needed, and on what types of development environments and what types of IDEs are involved. It also depends on whether there are other systems and tools available already.

Just one person is required for deployment and maintenance of the solution. Rather than a developer, that person would be an administrator for the system.

The benefits I've mentioned can be reflected as monetary benefits, which I would estimate at 35 percent annually.

Microsoft is a big challenge for OpenText when it comes to pricing because they are much cheaper. But it definitely depends on the complexity of the environment. If it has multiple technologies, at that point, looking at other options and Microsoft would be a feasible approach.

We work with Microsoft TFS. We also use JIRA, but I don't consider JIRA a competing component, rather we integrate it. One of the pros of TFS is definitely its integration and supportability if you are a Microsoft development environment, using .NET and the like. There's a lot of seamless integration there. Also, from a pricing perspective, usually Microsoft can provide you with very cheap packaging options. Those are the two main pros for Microsoft TFS.

Dedicate someone for the administration. Often companies assign a developer to take care of it but this is not the proper approach. Someone needs to have responsibility for the administration. Also the process when using the solution should be a consultative approach. First look at your process and your development life cycle and then reflect it in the tool. Also, be clear about the integration points before starting the implementation so that the technical requirement and scope, etc., are clear.

Regarding reducing manual testing time, this didn't happen in the extreme because we were already automating most of the environments. There was a lot of automated testing. But it helped in facilitating the "life cycle" approach, especially if the environment already had Microsoft TFS. You integrate it and put it on top and you gain big benefits.

We are using it for agile projects. Our company projects run using Agile models, so we use all the important modules of Octane, like Backlog, Epics, Feature, and user story in Tasks. We are also using the Product Backlog and Team Backlog modules as well as the Quality modules under quality, test and defects. This is primarily for agile and are all the modules and dashboards that we use. 

Another use is for waterfall projects. To some extent, we are using the requirement documents and Quality modules for our waterfall projects.

We just started analyzing and using a module called Pipelines Analysis. We are trying to integrate our Jenkins with Octane to start using it. This is in the initial stages.

After taking input from the OpenText sales team, deployment team, installation team, and professional services team, we are using Octane to its full capabilities, except for with the Pipeline Analysis and dashboards. We still need to focus more on dashboards, because Octane does support plenty of dashboards. We want to start using those in a big way along with the Pipeline Analysis. We are already using all the other modules in a big way. We started configuring dashboards for agile, waterfall, and various built-in widgets, but this is also in the initial stages. We need to explore more the dashboards and Pipeline Analysis, which is where we are seeking support from OpenText.

It is purely for project milestone progress, project environment, project development, project execution, software development, and software execution. Then, we are using it mainly for holding and maintaining the repository of Product Backlog, Epics, Features, testing test cases, system integration testing, and user acceptance testing. That is the scope that we have defined.

Its end-to-end traceability is one of the big advantages. Most of our agile projects work in a closed team structure. We are seeing what is the flow, where we are, and what is the project milestone. So, it provides end-to-end traceability and good visibility of project milestones. 

In real-time statistics, anyone can go and configure it easily. The user interface is very user-friendly. 

We built a status dashboard within Octane by adding some additional user defined fields (UDFs) that use real-time status about how much a project progressed, how much testing is done, and how much testing is left. Then, project management can help with visibility of the progress for every project within Octane.

The cluster architecture that we implemented was server to server communication: Octane application to Elasticsearch and Elasticsearch to another Elasticsearch service. Recently, we found this is a security gap. The Octane application is interacting with Elasticsearch server, but that was missing from the requirements and prerequisites in the setup. The OpenText team has not given advice on how to implement authentication-based communication between Octane to Elasticsearch, and we found it as a gap later, then our security team asked us to fix that gap. So, there was a lot of time spent on rework. They should have helped us with a clear requirement. This requirement has slipped from the initial requirements and drafting during the installation, causing additional rework for us after installation. This means my admin team and I have to work to fix that gap. I already gave this feedback to my customer success manager, "Security related prerequisites and requirements should be thoroughly explained to the client." Hopefully, they can apply this and avoid future rework.

For the requirement document, the module should provide multiple templates to be prepared, or customized quickly, and be reusable.

For the Pipeline Analysis, job or application grouping has to support Jenkins job grouping, because we have thousands of jobs running. Unfortunately, we are unable to group those by using multiple filters. They could help us with these features in upcoming releases in the next six months. That would be great because many testing and production jobs for Jenkins users need filters and grouping.

We started using the tool in the last four to five months. Now, all our users are using OpenText ALM Octane.

For the last four months since we have been using it in a big way, we have not seen any downtime or surprises from the stability from an availability point of view. 

We have dedicated administrators who handle support for Octane and other tools.

It is scalable. We do need to explore it more to determine its support for a scalable framework. 

We are in touch with them. Their support is very good. We are constantly communicating with our customer success manager, who is helping us with a lot of queries. He is trying to resolve them. He brings in his R&D team to sort out our issues, which is good. We are getting good support, but there are a few product limitations that we have highlighted. We have asked them with help fixing those limitations by providing alternative solutions.

The requirement document has to be more flexible for the features, user interface, modules, and capabilities. It needs more advanced features, like copy paste of the various templates. It should have an inbuilt capability to build and design any template with reusable capability.

We moved from ALM Quality Center to Octane. We mainly switched because we have more than 50 percent of our projects running on an agile model, and ALM Quality Center doesn't support agile. 

We wanted to have interim projects for traceability and milestone visibility. We also wanted to have a tool where my team could write scenarios for user stories and those user stories would be available in a single tool. So, Octane is a better tool for the future.

Octane supports DevOps integration tools.

The actual Octane installation is straightforward, but it was a complex process for us because it is a cluster architecture. We have two Octane applications, three Elasticsearch, two databases, and seven to nine servers. While complex, we are not experiencing any issues so far. 

It was a nine week activity where we did the initial setup. The process was complex. We found issues while doing the integration between Jenkins and the DevOps and automation tools. 

When we started the integration with the other tools, like Jenkins, Selenium, or UFT, and tried to automate things or integrate with Jira, then it took more time because of the compatibility issues. It may not be working as expected and my automation framework may be different as well as Octane may not support my automation framework. My automation framework may be using Selenium, so I have to change my automation framework to ensure that it works with Octane. These things have to be in front of the client in advance to work out and give advanced information about compatibility issues of the automation framework and compatibility with the Octane, so an evaluation can be done during the due diligence on the first week of the kickoff meetings. Then, we can save time during the implementation.

The OpenText team should be providing more end-to-end view during the installation and user acceptance testing. They should provide more knowledge on the usage of the tools and various important capabilities, e.g., how do we use that? That is the missing part of the Professional Services. We had to go over it again by raising many queries and tickets. Therefore, the knowledge transfer of capabilities has to be given more focus during the installation.

Integration with other tools, compatibility, and frameworks has to be thoroughly checked by the OpenText team in conjunction with the client team for faster integration and to avoid surprises during the implementation.

For deployment, I was involved as a manager and there were two more guys from my admin team, who looked after the tools. There was one person from OpenText Professional Services along with a OpenText project manager. There were two team members actively involved throughout the project to open firewalls, do the setup, install, and troubleshoot. There was also one more guy for automation purposes when we were working on the automation integration for Selenium and UFT, and he worked for two to three weeks of time. Overall, three people worked for eight weeks.

We are not using this solution for operations. We are using the Octane tool for purely project solution delivery. For operations, we use Remedy tools, not Octane.

Jira has its own limitations, so we thought Octane would be better.

Our testers and manager do conduct risk-based testing implicitly, but we don't call it that. We apply it unconsciously and do it on the fly. We upload 100 or 200 test cases, depending on the timeline, and prioritize them. At the end of the day, we execute 70 or 80 of them and roll out the project. Eventually, all the functionalities are covered and no defects slip to production.

Currently, Octane's support for single sign-on is implemented separately, so we are not using it. Maybe in future we will use it.

We are ready to explore a couple of the solution's capabilities. I would have given a nine out of 10 had I explored those capabilities and been satisfied with them, but I am unable to do that. However, I can give the overall tool after the installation with support an eight out of 10.

The most valuable are the Agile practice methodologies. We have Waterfall with ALM and we use Octane for our Agiles. That's our distinction between the two.

I like the visual interface. The way they've redesigned the interface over ALM. ALM is kind of old-school, but it's mature and functional. Octane presents the graphics and the feedback that people need immediately without drilling into the dashboards. That's probably the biggest selling point for our teams.

Two things. One is Agile. The other is the CI integration. We've always struggled bringing the development teams directly into ALM. ALI is a bridge, but it's cumbersome. The CI integration of the pipelines is what we're looking for right now. To bring us into the DevOps potential. That's the biggest draw right now.

Octane fits that niche that we never had. We need an Agile solution. We had other teams using other products that are semi-Agile, but we didn't have an approved standard. Octane gives us that. It's awesome.

The biggest challenge for us is to bridge the ALM practices for testing more directly into Octane. That's going to be a challenge because the methodology between Waterfall and Agile is so radically different. We're going to have a challenge with that, but we knew that going in. The testing is new and we have a lot of embedded testing practices with the old ALM approach.

So it would be good to have something in-between there. Some kind of a bridge or training, that is going to be what we're looking at now.

We have yet to see anything that doesn't work. It's awesome.

We've only got 20 live projects in there right now. So I don't see any issues with it. Until we can put some massive projects in there. We've taken one 65-gig project from Agile Manager and ported that into Octane. We don't see any degradation, but that was still prototype.

I've used them pretty much every day. It's the most responsive tech support, it's been awesome. That's another reason we're going to Octane, because of that immediate support. That feedback.

We used Agile Manager and it does not have the testing capabilities. We really needed that. We also need the business rules, we needed some of the workflow that's not in Agile Manager. We needed an Agile solution that had a lot of the same capabilities and business rules that ALM has.

We didn't see that coming in the Agile Manager, so as soon as Octane came out, we jumped on it.

In choosing a vendor what's important is communication. Show up. Talk with us. Build that relationship and then we'll talk product.

I was involved in it, yes, but I have to qualify that. It's SaaS. All I have to do is call Mike. I didn't have to do anything, really, other than start using it. It's intuitive as can be.

No, just HPE, Micro Focus. It's our standard.

Getting something new approved is a nightmare. It also makes our job easier. We tell them, "This is the standard," and we can move on. We're not deluded by looking at bunch of other options.

Invest the time. Invest the time. Learn what it can do. Right now, it's still being developed. It's an Agile tool being developed into Agile practices. Don't get ingrained in what you see today. Accept changes. If you truly are an Agile environment, you get that. If you don't get that and you want things to be finished before you get there, then you probably don't understand Agile. They kind of go hand-in-hand. It's an Agile tool being built Agilely and you've got an Agile practice. You should be able to put two and two together. If not, you need to stay in Waterfall.

I mainly use ALM Octane for product teams and Agile teams.

The biggest problem with ALM Octane is that it's very complex, so it's difficult to use and scale. The graphics could also be improved, and CSD could be added.

I've been using this solution for over a year.

ALM Octane is stable, but its performance isn't so good.

The scalability isn't good.

Micro Focus' technical support is good.

Positive

The initial setup was difficult and took over three months.

We used an in-house team to implement.

ALM Octane is very expensive.

I compared Octane with Jira, which is better-priced and more user-friendly than Octane.

ALM Octane is complex and difficult to use, so you have to be willing to train the people who are going to be working with it. I would rate it five 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.