OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

We mostly use the Defect module and then Test Plan, Test Lab. But if you ask about the most valuable feature it is the customization of any action in the ALM client. We can customize any action, window, or workflow of not only the Defect workflow but also any other entity. There is no other tool that can do it in such a way.

The testing methodology we use means we do not need any other tool for requirements, testing and so on.

• Dashboard complexity
• Quick generation (for many entities the reports are very slow)
• Test Lab is very complex, it should be simpler

We used it for more than 10 years (from version 8 as Test Director from Mercury).

The clients, of course, are not stable, but it is acceptable.

Scalability is not a problem at this time because the hardware is better than the software needs.

Technical support is good.

Yes, we used Rational ClearQuest. It was very customizable too but it was old and tough and we need a better and more elegant solution.

Initial setup is very simple, but the upgrade on Linux is impossible so we moved to Windows.

Pricing is very big, so it's good is to negotiate with its vendors. The solution is not so important and should not cost so much.

Yes, we evaluated three other options but it was about 10 years ago and it is not relevant now to specify them here. The other options also have very good solutions.

Do the simple implementation, do not customize it because you will have more problems.

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.

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.

LeanFT:

LeanFT is a new solution, but in general, it's opened us up to a wider audience such as the developers, so they can actually do their unit testing. We couldn’t do that with HPE UFT. This is the big advantage of this tool.

The second thing is you can use more technologies than with UFT, including using different languages like Java.

The third part is that we can use the Cucumber test framework, which is something that you can use easily with LeanFT.

Quality Center:

Quality Center is our testing management tool. When you're running a global team with more than 120 QA staff around the world, you need one repository to write, run, monitor, and share your test cases between teams.

This is the most valuable feature of this solution and you can do it very easily. The UI is very user-friendly. With one click, you can see the status of each project that you're executing. Quality Center is the Rolls Royce of solutions and I would give it the highest rating.

LeanFT:

LeanFT should include more technologies. For example, I would like it to include the Scala programming language. That is one of the main language that we use.

Quality Center:

There is a new product, HPE ALM Octane, which might be the solution for the gaps. I would like to see more connection to more products and processes, and including the DevOps into Quality Center.

Stability for both is okay.

Scalability is becoming more complex. Scaling involves more experienced people because it’s not easy to scale.

LeanFT:

Because this is a new product, we're not at a stage to scale something. I don't know how it's going to scale. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it should be okay.

Quality Center:

Since Quality Center is a web application, it's easy to add more users and products.

Technical support is good. We are located in Israel, with an Israeli team, so it's easy to contact them. We have the right phone numbers and from that standpoint, it's great.

There's always room for improvement and additional customization that would be nice. In general, both solutions are quite easy to install.

LeanFT:

There is a debate between this solution and Selenium, and we use both of them. Your choice of tool depends on the technology and the gaps in each of them. We are not an “all-HPE shop”.

Quality Center:

We looked at IBM’s RTC for an ALM solution. We use it now for implementing SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), which is designed for feature tasks, user stories, and program board elements.

We chose HPE because I had good experience with them when I was Test Director. In term of overall experience, HPE provides a good experience for the users and a lot of benefits which you cannot find with other vendors.

We use ALM with our QA Department and it provides a way for us to show our work as a repository for our test-cases. We're able to show what we do on a daily basis. It's very easy to use and it's worked well for us.

Over the past year, we've been able to decrease our defect reduction by executing and making sure we have test-base coverage in all the areas. I don't quite know the percentage exactly. We've been able to reduce the defects.

We've done our source code in another application for so long, to have developers come over to help QA integrate it would probably be an impossible effort.

It's been okay. I think the problem with us is, it can be used for the entire SDLC process, as far as requirements, development and that type of thing, but we only use it for QA.

What happens is, we're having to use multiple products to come to one goal. That's kind of frustrating for the teams. I think if we could get to the point where we could use it as one solution, it would be so much more beneficial.

We haven't scaled it yet, but we're looking to do that. We're working with a company now to look at some different solutions, or at least the ART tool. It's looks very impressive to us. We're in conversations about the ART tool, because we really need something like that for our analysts.

It's an educational tool, so you are able to link your education and link it with Rally. If you have a module that you want to teach, you can just teach them through that. It's a direct connection to HP ALM.

I've never used tech support. We have an individual that works closely with HP. Any technical issues that comes across the team, he tends to work directly with HP to handle those.

We use ALM for all of our applications and didn't use anything before. We're a maturing software company, so we're really getting into these distinct processes, like ALM. We're currently going through a transformation into Agile, so we're really just ramping up to get to that mature stage as a software company.

I was there, but I wasn't involved. I was an independent contributor.

I wouldn't rate it a 10 because it doesn't have the ability to do all the things the developers use today, like TFS. Overall I would recommend it, because of its ease of use. It doesn't take much to get up to date on it and to learn the process of using it for your test-case execution in ALM.

You don't have much time to spend on education. You don't have two weeks for them to learn an application. So, because it's easy to use, I would definitely recommend it for that reason.

With HP ALM, I think it's the fact that it's self-contained application so we can do everything inside the application. We only need to use this one tool.

The availability and the fact that HPE people want to help is something that I appreciate because they are with us, they try to help, they try to understand what we need and they act accordingly.

I think it sells because it's HP ALM. It's because it's a collaboration tool. It helps everybody collaborate within a project and because of that I think we save time and we have less difficulty making sure that everybody is aligned.

The tech support is sometimes not clear when you speak to them.

We had some issue before but now its been fixed. It's because we migrated from an old version and we went to a new one. That created a couple of issues but now it's solved. We need to go to another version so it will be another challenge, but we're working with HPE to understand the best way to do it.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

It's good but we need to manage exactly what we need from them. Sometimes on the business side it's not clear enough. When it's not clear we don't have the results we need. The next time we need to make sure to correctly define our needs and involve them in that way.

We didn't use any other solution previously.

It's not straightforward because for us it was because it was an upgrade of the infrastructure as well. So at the same time we changed the server, we also changed the infrastructure. It was not because of the product itself, it was more linked to what we needed to do at that time.

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.

The most valuable features are ALM's flexibility and performance. We're also able to customize it to do what we want it to do.

Using it properly is our biggest challenge, as some people use it on the most basic level and others rely on other tools.

I think the biggest challenge with ALM is getting useful data in one place. They're scattered in different parts of the solution right now.

It should also allow us to get quicker access to data from the things we're working on.

The overall usability of it could be improved as some things are a bit slow to get used to.

It has deployed just fine for us without issues.

It's close to being perfectly stable. We have no problem with instability.

It has scaled easily for us and our needs.

Customer service is generally pretty good.

Technical support has been pretty good so far. They tend to be fairly quick to respond to us.

We're using JIRA alongside ALM, but there wasn't a prior solution to ALM.

Setting it up is not too difficult.

We implemented it ourselves.

We constantly keep an eye on competitors, but there's not been anything that we've considered moving to.