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.

Our primary use case for this solution is preparing test cases, and we deploy the solution via desktop.

The independent view of elevated access is good. In addition, the elevated instructions being sent to our SQL is valuable.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the response from customer service and support could be improved.

We have been using this solution for fifteen years. We are currently using version 12 but intend to migrate to version 16.

I rate the scalability of the solution ten out of ten. There are currently over 100 users using this solution in our organization.

We have had a poor experience with customer service and support, and sometimes, we do not get responses from them.

We have previously used JIRA, but ALM was a better solution for us.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment is done in-house.

I cannot comment on licensing as another department handles it.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I'm using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for testing purposes.

What's most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is that it's useful for these activities: test designing, test planning, and test execution.

What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center are the dashboard and the management tools particularly used for management reviews. Currently, what's missing in the solution is the ability for users to see the ongoing scenarios and the status of those scenarios versus the requirements. As for the management tools, they also need to be improved so users can have a better idea of what's going on in just one look, so they can manage testing activities better.

An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is having management visibility on the dashboard. For example, it would be so much easier if there's global information that users could work with.

I've been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for six months now.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a stable product.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center should be scalable, but I don't know what's behind the infrastructure, so I'm unsure of its scalability.

I don't deal directly with external support. I'm dealing with internal support, so I can't rank the technical support for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. I don't deal with their support directly.

My organization previously used HP Quality Center, but I don't remember the differences between that solution and Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. I also don't make decisions on whether to move from one solution to another solution.

I wasn't part of the team who set up Micro Focus ALM Quality Center, so I don't have information on whether the process was straightforward or complex.

I'm not aware of the pricing or licensing cost for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

At least sixty people who are part of different departments are using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center in the organization I'm working for now.

There are people who use the solution once a day, while there are people who use it twice a week, etc. It depends on their positions.

I'm rating Micro Focus ALM Quality Center six out of ten. What would make it an eight or a nine for me is improving the dashboard and adding a management tool that would be useful for management reviews.

We're primarily using the solution as a testing tool where we're recording our testing data. Our use cases vary, however. Right now, for example, we're merging two companies together. When we are doing that, we have various test cycles and we have gone through three test cycles so far. aNow we're heading into UAT. So we're testing all aspects of the business, including HR, operations, gas, and electric generation. We're doing pretty much our stand-alone tests, or unit testing. Then we will then go into our end-to-end testing where all of the systems are working together. After that is done, we'll be heading into more of our business testing, our UAT.

The ability to really deeply analyze everything down to individual users has been very useful for the organization as a whole.

Most of the features that I like the best are more on the analytics side. We are generating our analytics from the execution module. After your tests are executed, we're able to generate all of our analysis for our presentations and to present findings to leadership. There are a lot of different views that you have access to. You can show your pass rate, your fail rate, etc. You can pretty much drill it down all the way to what each tester is doing. That's one of the really good features that they have at ALM.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution is very easy to use, even right out of the box. You don't need to do a lot of configurations.

You can create roles and assign various rights to each of the roles per project. You can really customize the product.

The uploading of test scripts can get a little cumbersome and that is a very sensitive task. They could improve on that a lot. It's really important that this gets better as I'm loading close to a thousand test scripts per cycle.

I've been using the solution for about three years at this point. It's been a while.

The solution is extremely stable. We really have not had any issues even after upgrading and taking the whole system down. It's very user-friendly right out of the box. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution can scale well. If we need to add different modules to it, it has the ability to expand. You do need licensing for that. However, the out-of-the-box features included in the solution are great.

We haven't really scaled it just yet. We have about 250-300 users right now. They are largely tester, developers, admin and project managers.

Technical support so far has been great. I've found that we can tell them about an issue, and they're usually back to us within the same day with a solution. We're quite satisfied with the level of service provided. I'd rate them ten out of ten.

This is the only solution I have ever used. I don't know if the company worked with something else previously.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. It's easy. We didn't face any difficulties at all. I wouldn't describe the process as complex.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with ALM.

If you want a good tool that is robust and is very user-friendly and capable of supporting a program with multiple streams or multiple workstreams, ALM would be the perfect tool. It can basically track all of your testing. It also allows you to collaborate with all of your testers, stakeholders, etc. 

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten due to the fact that it's user-friendly, and it has the ability to track various projects or various workstreams of a program. Also, the test scripts are reusable. For example, let's say if we are going to utilize those same test scripts for another project, a couple of years down the line, they are available, and you can do real-time updates within ALM. That's really helpful.

It's a centralized test management solution. The fact that you have a place where you can go and find all the stuff that you need to find, and keep track of all of the results long term. That is extremely valuable.

In terms of functionality, it really provides all of the stuff that you need for managing test cases and test execution and keeping track of all of these different items. Now, in terms of keeping up with the trends, there's obviously a lot of challenges.

The new offering, Octane, has all of the essential features that we need in order to move forward to the next mode of operation. I tried to use it and, unfortunately, we had all sorts of trouble down to some limitations as to what kind of URL you can use. That was a pretty sad issue that we ran into. Had that not been the case, I would right now be planning to move on to Octane.

The key pieces of functionality are in place. The reason why I wouldn't rate it higher than seven out of 10 is because you're still using really obsolete technology like ActiveX. You have to physically install the product on your desktop. That's a big no-no. Other than that, it is not far away from being much better than what it is.

17 years.

It is very stable. It has some issues here and there but not significant.

We have struggled to grow with the tool, because the original model was to have just a handful of ALM projects, whereas, we have more than 150 projects. Whenever you pass some threshold, it becomes a challenge.

Even upgrading, it's a massive effort. I'd say at least a six month effort for us just to upgrade it.

The tech support is not so great so far. At least as far as the HPE tech support is concerned. Before, when it was Mercury, it was the best tech support of all time. Right now it's okay. It's doable. It could be better though.

When looking at a company to work with, it's as simple as knowing that the products are mature. We know that if there are going to be issues, we're going to be able to find solutions or some work around for them. It's as simple as that. There's a lot of competition out there. Especially in the open source space, but for you to get support on open source, that's probably a whole different ball game.

Cross project customization through template really helps to maintain standards with respect to fields, workflows throughout the available projects.

Traceability feature really allows you to maintain linkage between all the test artifacts, starting from Releases>Requirements>Test Coverage>Test Execution>Defects. ALM allows you to maintain complete end-to-end process.

Business Views has really come in handy for all users, as different kinds of reports can be created very easily and published to all the stakeholders.

Synchronizer add-in has allowed us to integrate Microfocus ALM to other third-party tools like JIRA, ClearCase and ClearQuest, and helps to eliminate the isolation between these tools.

ALM has brought great collaboration among the team members.

Helps to maintain all the test artifacts in one place as a central repository where all teams can contribute and collaborate with each other.

Dashboard

• Defect ageing reports need to be included as built-in
• Availability of built-in report related to Defect Removal efficiency
• Availability of built-in report for calculating Defect Density
• Availability of built-in report for end-to-end traceability
• Availability of reports specific to Automation projects.

Management- Libraries

• Ability to include Test Set data in Libraries so that Test Set execution can be transferred to other projects using Library functionality

Test Lab

• Ability to upload Test Execution results from Excel to HPE ALM

Test Plan

• Ability to maintain Manual and Automation projects in single HPE ALM project
• Composite execution of manual and automated scripts would be helpful

Defects

• SLA-related ability for defect module where ALM would send automail to stakeholders for the defects which have not been updated in a long time

I have been using the solution for 10 years now.

ALM is quite a stable application. We had some issues during the initial setup but it's been stable since, due to right level of competency/expertise we have in the organization to maintain the ALM setup.

No scalability issues.

Technical support is not that great. We really need to push to get HPE support to provide a resolution for technical issues. Tech support needs to improved now, as it has deteriorated badly.

HPE ALM was our first choice.

Initial setup was not that complex.

HPE has always been flexible in terms of pricing and licensing, but we are a bit concerned with the fact that it is now in the hands of Micro Focus and things may change.

No.

Think about the below before you start implementing this product:

• What’s the total user base you are expecting to on-board?
• How many projects/countries/entities are going to be on-boarded to the platform, and then design the hardware configurations accordingly.
• Do you have any other tools which need to be integrated with this product? Is there any ready-to-use integration already available or do you need to build it from scratch?
• Note that this product does provide the ability to control user access and provides security.
• Talk to your network security team and check if anything specific needs to implemented along with this product, like dual factor user provisioning, reverse proxy, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2. Does this product support all these?
• Check the organization plan in terms of roll-out of latest Operating Systems, Browsers. Does this product support those latest OSs, browsers, versions, etc?
• Hire a HP ALM administrator expert who can guide you to implement the product in the right manner.

From a testing perspective, creating our test cases, executing test cases and then raising defects, it gives us good visibility back to our functional requirements.

It’s one product that allows us to do everything from a system test perspective.

We’ve seen a couple demos for Octane and Agile Manager. I think the direction it’s going will deliver what we want. At this time, it delivers what we need, but the direction that Octane is going is what I would like to go towards.

We’ve had the product online for about 7 years.

We have not really had any problems with it. It delivers everything that we need.

The way things are going, it’s going in the direction that we would want; with ALM, Octane, and all the types of products that we want.

I don’t use technical support personally. We have another guy that we report issues to and he looks after those.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

From a testing perspective, it is a great product for system test and delivers everything that you need. It gives you the complete package and full visibility from your requirements to creating tests, test execution and defect tracking. Definitely a great tool.

When looking at vendors, we look for reliability, trust. If you do have an issue, you want to know that somebody is going to take an interest in it.

For us, the most valuable features are the task management function and the requirements gallery that's true to test execution. It's a good mapping tool and a good sensor repository for all prior testing. We can keep all that data in one centralized place.

I think the best improvement it's made to our organization is that because it's so stable, we haven't needed to change. We're able to continue with our business because it's a solution that stands still.

Sometimes there are small customizations that we'd like that are not always available. If I need to contact technical support about an small issues, sometimes it takes some time before I can get resolution. And if there's a feature that's not available, we need to wait for another release because we can't just simply add the feature we need.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It has enterprise-grade stability. We never have any issues with it.

It's definitely scalable.

Absolutely fine. We have contacts where if you just send them an e-mail they will ring you in 15 minutes. It's been a good relationship with the guys. Really helpful.

It's very straightforward and the pre-sales guys are really good.

They come in and set it up.