OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

First of all, the product works. ALM is traditionally more of a waterfall application, but it does allow you to collect your requirements, your test cases, and you can even execute test cases automatically from ALM, which is great. Everyone's trying to do DevOps these days or Agile, so it's a good product.

It allows us to do things more efficiently. There's nothing like spending millions of dollars upgrading an application, and trying to manage your requirements, your test cases, your defects in a spreadsheet. Who has access to that? That's what that product gives you.

We need to move to Agile or DevOps. We have other products that do that, but I'm trying to standardize on a platform. I'm very interested in HP Agile Manager.

We've had no issues with the stability.

It's real easy to scale and add more licenses.

Not directly through HPE. We go through HPE's vendor partner, which is Checkpoint Technologies, and they provide excellent technical support.

When I took over Quality Assurance, we had Quality Center. ALM is the new Quality Center, and we upgraded to version 12 of ALM. 550 projects with no problems.

I came in and decided that we needed to upgrade to v12. We reached out to our vendor partner, Checkpoint Technologies, and they came in, assessed what it would take to upgrade it, and they did the upgrade for us.

It doesn't do Agile very well. We can make it do it, but it wasn't designed to do it either. That's not being fair to the product. It's a waterfall-based product. You should go straight to HPE Agile Manager.

QA Test Management is good. The menus have changed over the years which is nice, and now it is also integrated with other defect tracking systems. Before, it was only compatible with QTP.

We used to use Excel spreadsheets. Using Quality Center as one tool helped us to track just one tool from beginning to end.

Report summaries help me to figure out where a project stands and how much work is left for the QA team to complete.

• This is a great test management tool, but it is very expensive. The price needs to be affordable as it's high priced when compared to other test management tools with similar functions.
• SpiraTest and QMetry can be used on iPhone, iPad, etc., but I am not sure whether Quality Center also works on iOS platforms or Android devises.
• Use a SCRUM board extension to make it more usable for Agile.
• It needs to integrate better with other vendor software, e.g. JIRA, Selenium IDE, and SoapUI.
• It should be easier to use like SpiraTest or QMetry.

I've used it since 2005.

No issues encountered.

Sometimes it runs fast, and sometimes it runs slow.

It has scaled for our use.

They used to respond in 24 to 48 hours, now it's longer, and when compared to SpiraTest, it's not that great.

They used to respond in 24 to 48 hours, now it's longer, and when compared to SpiraTest, it's not that great.

I used the software version of Quality Center, and the initial set-up was straightforward. After changing it to the web version, it was much better.

It was implemented before I joined the company.

6/10.

It's priced high, and they should look into it to make it more competitive.

We also looked at SpiraTest, and it is more affordable than Quality Center.

Check the price and compare to other available tools in the market and decide select the one best fits the needs.

• Ability to link a test case to a defect which increases traceability
• Ability to log a defect and link similar defects to that one defect. Great for not logging repetitive defects
• The content of the test case parameters (Actual, Expected Results etc) are pulled on the defect which nullifies retyping
• Ability to manage more than one project site at a go
• Reporting structure can be done using a self generated graph. Makes reports look professional even if the user is not completely clued up on ways to report.

1. When I started testing we used to test from SharePoint. This was good for the time being but it lacked a lot in terms of design and the priority of defects was not up to standard. There was no sight of show-stoppers and nobody would know of them unless it is communicated with the relevant people. As opposed to Quality Center where it is highlighted in a form of “level of severity” by putting a scale of low, medium and high
2. In Quality Center one is able to attach a screen print as proof of testing.

• GUI colours not that great
• On the defect site, when one adds a comment, anybody who has access to the same defect can change the initial comment. It would be great if the defect comments would not be editable.

I've never done a deployment.

Our organisation did not have any issues with the stability of this tool.

We were able to have a lot of users logged in at the same time with no lag time or any scalability related issues.

You should invest in Quality Center if you are looking for the following :

• High visibility of project progress
• If you cannot afford automation. or are not completely convinced but want to speed up their testing efforts, you can look into getting a Quality Center/ALM plug-in called Sprinter. A very good testing tool that is worth trying out.
• If you want a quick and smooth transition from manual testing into automation. Its smooth because HP holds your hand until your team is able to execute QTP independently. They are also available to see you through any technically difficulties.

The Test Plan and Test Lab modules.

My clients were able to implement an end-to-end process for software testing. From release management and requirement gathering, to testing and defect management, Quality Center provides a centralized location for managing all aspects of your testing data and results.

The reporting features could be improved.

I've used it for nine years.

There are a lot of nuances with integrations and implementation of Quality Center and third-party applications. With proper planning and expertise guidance, issues with deployment can be resolved. I have not encountered any issues with deployment that could not be resolved.

Stability depends on the hardware/infrastructure where the web application resides. Availability, access, memory, speed are dependent on the environment which is setup, and used, for Quality Center deployment.

No issues encountered.

7/10 for customer service.

Being involved in the HP partner program for many years and involved in a certified support team, I had access to higher levels of support team members which alleviated the hurdles that may be present at the bottom level support team members.

No previous solution used.

It does require a level of expertise to install/setup Quality Center. Doing it without any prior experience, could cause a delay in deployment, as well as unintended issues.

I was a consultant for a Fortune 500 company where we implemented this product not only in our own environment, but for our clients as well. I have implemented this product to over 50 companies since 2006, including top pharmaceutical, and medical device companies within the health and life sciences industry.

Understand what your company needs are, and how many users will need access. There are different licenses based on local, regional, and global access as needed as well as total amount of users. There is also licensing based at a modular level as well. Work with your HP Sales representative to get a pricing/licensing plan for your specific needs.

No other options were evaluated.

Do your research and talk to an expert regarding the product. Having demonstrations and trial access to the product helps with decision making. Understanding the requirements and your current environment helps guide the discussions with an expert. Understanding the limitations will also help.

• Requirements module
• Test Plan/Case module
• Defect module
• Reporting modules
• API

• Real-time snapshot of project vitals
• Reusability of requirements
• Tests
• Flexibility in assigning multiple testers to a project, rather than assigning each tester to a test case
• Seamless on the fly reorganise test projects due to corporate emergencies and shifting priorities

• Traceability and version control management
• Not able to group project deliverables by builds

I've used it for six years.

When we were installing v10, the installation became corrupted. So when we upgraded to v11, it was very expensive, and at our own cost, to do. This was regardless of our maintenance contract with HP.

No issues encountered.

Our vendor is 10/10, but HP is 7/10.

Our vendor is 10/10, but HP is 8/10.

No previous solution was used.

The installation tools are not the best, even for experienced IT/admin, it self-corrupts, and there is no good tech support to help with install issues unless you pay them to fly in a team.

We did it in-house.

It's 300%.

It depends on your vendor. SkyIt was the best, as they were able to get the initial cost low enough so a small startup could afford it.

• IBM
• JIRA/Test Link

For small companies where audits/lawsuits etc. are not a factor, it's not worth the investment. You should use open source or lower cost alternatives (JIRA project/defect tracking, Test Link open source QC like Test Tool). However, for any company that wants a mature, highly developed platform that is constantly improving, need to survive audits, etc., you must consider HP ALM solutions such as HP Quality Center.

REST API. It lets me do what I need to do, instead of what HPE Quality Center does on its own.

By using the REST API, I have automated QA Reporting, and integrated QA information into the development build process.

Its performance is horrible, and it's unnecessarily complex, which means the local site administrators set it up to be used in very unproductive ways.

10 years (including earlier versions).

Yes. While most of it is introduced by our poor local setup, that is a direct outcome of my complaint mentioned in the need for improvement.

Yes, but again this mostly do with how we implemented it locally. Again, it is an outcome of the issue that the local site administrators set it up to be used in very unproductive ways.

On the lower end.

I have a lot of trouble getting to useful information – on the HP site, and with their technical support. Though I’m far removed from interacting with HP support directly now (at one point I was on the local support team for HPE QC, but now I’m just a user within my company).

Yes – HPE QC is much better than anything else I have seen.

Extremely complex, and unnecessarily so. Main reason was HPE QC doesn’t do a good job of explaining how you can keep it simple and still get the same job done. The tool is ready to do a great job, its how it gets implemented that is the real problem.

I understand that it’s still extremely expensive.

Yes – PVCS Tracker, Compuware’s Track Record, SmartBear, and JIRA. Some groups use JIRA for defect management (in addition to its development usage), but local JIRA usage is just as messed up in its setup that it just recreated the problems which we have with HPE QC instead of solving them.

Same advice as for any Test Resources Management product: KISS – "Keep it simple, stupid."

Defect Management: This feature allows us to track the defect status for our project, send the notification to the user via email and all the details about the defects can be maintained for the future reference as knowledge center.

Graphs and Dashboard: This is one of the top features, by which we can track the status of the project with ease to keep track of project management and executive reporting.

The live graphs can be exported via public URL's and can be integrated with SharePoint and others as required.

More collaborative, ease of work, and better documentation of all project activities.

Certainly on the UI part, it has to be improved to make it user-friendly and more presentable.

More than three years.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Technical Support is great and always responsive to solve the issues.

Nope, the architecture is simple to implement and scale.

The price is a bit high.

Go ahead with this tool. It is for the project management and test execution.

Do consult a few of the other folks using this tool to understand the tricks.

Being able to quickly and easily compile executables on multiple platforms.

Just over 10 years ago, our organization joined the Australian Bill payment scheme, part of the technical requirements involve having to build a COBOL interface to their rules validation program. So we needed to source a COBOL development environment which would allow us to quickly develop and deploy a COBOL interface.

None that I can think of from my experience, MicroFocus COBOL does everything we need it to do.

More than 10 years

No, we found the support staff at MicroFocus in Australia to be highly knowledgeable and very much of assistance in helping us get our products setup and deployed.

None, the product has been absolutely rock-solid.

No, the solution has coped with tens of millions of dollars worth of transactions over the years.

Very high.

Extremely good.

No.

Yes, setup was fairly straightforward. It needed a little help with regards to the license server on the development platform, but once that was sorted out everything was smooth sailing.

We developed our solution in-house.

Substantial, the payment platform is an essential customer service.

We found the pricing to be very reasonable.

We did, however MicroFocus stood out with their excellent technical support.