OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

ALM makes functional testing much easier for our customers. We tell them that if they use ALM, they will have a productivity gain of at least 40% compared to using traditional spreadsheets, Word documents, and so on. They also need it because their departments are getting larger and larger. They're not sitting in the same place, so they need a tool to combine their teams’ efforts. This is difficult if you are using Excel spreadsheets because you need to send them by email and make sure they have the latest version.

We see the advantage of ALM over Quality Center. You can have templates instead of having specific templates for each product. Once we define the workflow for customer X and the setup for that customer, we include all of that in the template. If we want to make a change, we change it in the template. We'll then do an escalation down through all of the various products so that each and every one gets updated. So it means that things are administratively much easier with ALM compared to QC.

With Octane, HPE is finally trying to combine the agile world together with the functional testing world. It also has an integrated ALI, which means that with Octane you have one point of view of your whole testing process. I see that this as very valuable because we're also competing with JIRA and so on, which has the facilities that we are trying to accomplish with Agile Manager.

JIRA is fancied by developers; so if a war starts between developers and testers, usually what we see - in Denmark, at least, - is that the testers are on the losing side. But if we can get Agile Manager on our side, then we can start competing with products like JIRA.

We should consider not being a testing tool as such. I know that with ALI, we integrated the customer's EDI - the Eclipse, SAP and Visual Studio - but we'll need to do that more. We need to get moving in that direction as well.

ALM is a very stable product. The latest version we install at customer sites is 12.5.3. It's a very stable platform. We have no complaints whatsoever.

Our customers do not generally use HPE support very often; and therefore it's a bit awkward for them to get started with it. They find it pretty difficult. That's not the worst part. The worst part is really when you finally get to someone to talk to, and then they're not qualified. So we instruct our customers, if that happens to you, you should say immediately that I want to escalate this to a duty manager, who can then take charge. It's not as bad as the time we tried to move all of our support functions to India. That was terrible. Thank God we got it back; but I don't think we are there yet. We need more qualified people to take first-line support.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We are the experts in Denmark. That means it's a bit easier for us because we know exactly what to do. Various customers use our services to do that for them because it can be very complex if you only do it on a rare occasion. If there is a customer who needs to upgrade from 11.5.2, for example, and they haven’t touched the administrator module for a couple of years, it is easier for us to do the upgrade because we do it all the time.

HPE has failed desperately to offer a competitive enterprise for new customers in this market. If I have a new customer, three years ago I could sell them ALM site licenses. Now I need to sell them ALM global licenses, which is a hard sell because it is double the price. That just doesn't appeal for new customers. So I understand why they take JIRA or stick to Excel spreadsheets because HPE has priced themselves out of that market.

With Octane, you get more functionality; but it's like having Microsoft Word. How much of that functionality do you use? You probably use 20% out of the 80%. So I don't think that adding more functionality solves the problem. HPE desperately needs to get a low enterprise for new customers.

I believe that my largest competitor is our customers who are using Excel, followed by those who use JIRA.

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.

I used the solution to manage the tests that I would plan and record, and I would manage the flow of defects.

I work for a bank company that has a license to use this solution. I am using the solution through the internal internet, not on the cloud. I am using version 12.

It's user friendly, scalable, and very stable and strong. It's cooperative, meaning that I can assess the test to check it and follow the flow of defects, and the developers and the business can use this tool to follow the test process.

We are waiting to migrate from ALM to Octane. It's the same family of softwares, but ALM is designed for cascade systems. The new version of ALM called Octane is for Agile projects. There is more integration with Agile tools like JIRA and other things. I think that will be an improvement of ALM.

The integration could be improved because with Agile technology you are working more quickly than with a top-down methodology.

I have been using this solution for eight years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable. There are 1,000 users in my company.

I used to go to the site and look for questions and solutions on the forum, but I have never asked for support from Micro Focus.

The setup was completed by another team. I am only a user, and I don't control this part of the installation.

Deployment depends on the size of the project. Usually in Agile, you have three weeks of deployment. It does not depend on ALM because it's very easy to start using and deploy the test and the execution test, then follow up.

There is a team of at least four people for maintenance of the solution.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

If you are looking in the market to compare this solution with other tools that are maybe less expensive, I think that the ALM is more expensive than the others. I think that ALM is the best in class, depending on the size of your project. I recommend ALM for big companies with 1,000 to 3,000 users. Medium and small companies can use other, less expensive tools.

We are a consultancy. We use ALM Quality Center for handling waterfall type projects. If our clients are taking an agile approach, then we talk to them about Octane, which is the agile solution.

It has a brand new look and feel. It comes with a new dashboard that looks nice, and you can see exactly what you have been working with.

It is pricey.

I have been using this solution for at least 20 years.

It has been very stable. There was only one minor issue that a customer just stumbled upon. It really wasn't that big of a problem. It was something that was introduced in version 15.01 patch 2 but doesn't appear in version 15.5. It is something that they added to the product or fixed with the product, but the issue is back again.

It is scalable. You can have thousands of users running this product at the same time. 

We are a small consultancy, but we have customers who are running hundreds of thousands of users concurrently with the product and have no problems with it. They are running them on a worldwide basis.

Tech support is pretty good overall. There was a time when it wasn't all that great, but it is pretty good right now. It has vastly improved over what it was probably five years ago.

Ours is strictly partnership, so we haven't dealt with any other ALM type of products from other vendors.

It is fairly straightforward to set up. I didn't have any problems with it.

I don't know the exact numbers, but I know it is pricey. When we talked to the sales reps we work with from our company, they say, "Well, Micro Focus will never lose on price." So, they are willing to do a lot of negotiating if it is required.

You need to take a look at what you're doing right now and how your test requirements, defects, and so forth are organized. If you can, try to bring them under one umbrella. ALM Quality Center does all of those things. In the past, I found a lot of customers using a variety of tools to do these different things. One for requirements management, one for defects management, one for testing, and so forth. It is much easier if you can bring everything under the same umbrella, that is, ALM Quality Center.

ALM Quality Center is geared towards waterfall type projects, and a lot of customers are moving away from that right now. Octane is a solution for the agile model. In ALM Quality Center, we have what's called a test lab and a test plan so that you can organize your tests. The same capability is not there in Octane. It would be nice to bring that feature over into Octane so that we can easily see what are the tests and organize the tests any way we want.

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

The primary use case is test management, e.g., test executions using UFT combined with Business Process Testing. We do also requirement traceability, where we pull requirements out of a source system, then we link test cases to those requirements in order to have a coverage matrix.

It empowers us to do more testing. Our testing is being done for customers. 

The solution enables us to conduct risk-based testing. We link this solution to requirements of a certain risk factor. Once it's covered at least one time, it will show us in a report that it has been covered. Most tests are running automatically with UFT, so the check is already there in the automation, and there's no impact to us.

The Test Plan feature is the most valuable because of the test execution.

Security is covered. HTTPS works well. There is also support for LDAP over SSL. Those are the most important security features.

Within Quality Center, you have the dashboard where you can monitor your progress over different entities. You can build your own SQL query segments, and all that data is there in the system, then you can make a dashboard report. That works fine.

Managing multiple projects is possible when you have the full ALM license. However, we have the Quality Center license, which can be managed poorly. This is because you cannot look or report across projects.

We don't use Single Sign-On because this is available from version. Therefore, we do not use it right now. Also, it needs to be tested and we haven't tested it yet. With test automation. If you have Single Sign-On and want to make use of another user, that can be challenging. It is good for normal users to use Single Sign-On. However, it's not really a must at the moment, though it is good that the solution finally supports SSO.

Making Quality Center available to connect to external tools is doable, but it takes some work. With our current version, it is not fit for external entities. Connecting to external entities is easier to work with and report in using the newer versions. However, if you really want to use other tools, I would suggest giving ALM Octane a try.

The defect management module has room for improvement. E.g., for Jira tickets in defect management, they could have a direct link with Jira. However, with Micro Focus Connect, you can set up a link between Jira and Quality Center. 

Requirements management could be improved as the use is very limited. E.g., they have always stated that, "You can monitor and create requirements," but it has its limitations. That's why companies will choose another requirements management solution and import data from that source system into Quality Center. Micro Focus has also invested in an adapter between Dimensions RM and ALM via Micro Focus Connect. However, I see room for improvements in this rather outdated tool. I feel what Micro Focus did is say, "Our strategy is not to improve these parts within the tool itself, but search for supported integrations within our own tool set." This has not been helpful. 

I want to see Atlassian as part of the ALM solution. ALM Quality Center is more from a waterfall approach where Atlassian has already evolved into more of the DevOps and agile part.

I started using Quality Center ALM with version 9.2.

I just engaged with my new customer to do an upgrade. At the moment, it has been stable on all versions of Quality Center. However, I'm quite positive that will room for improvement will be needed shortly after we release the newest version of Quality Center.

Do not wait too long to upgrade. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to upgrade to the latest version with the newest features. Just like buying a car: You do not buy a car, then not go to service.

It is scalable in terms of high availability when you add an additional node because it's licensed for ALM. For Quality Center, this makes it less scalable. However, this is the perception from the vendor that the Quality Center addition is not for big enterprise. It's for a corporation, but not for an enterprise. Normally it's for bigger companies: 2000-plus users with over 1000 projects and domains. Then, they need to scale up with additional nodes, which will make it scalable enough for ALM.

It very much depends on the support engineer that you get. In the past, I've noticed that some really do not know the tool. Sometimes, I challenge first line of support or can come up with a solution faster than the support, but that's because I've also provided technical support for ALM in the past on the behalf of HPE. I know a bit more than the normal user.

Sometimes the support is very good, and sometimes it's a bit poor. E.g., if you go to the second or third of line support engineers, they really know the product. I've also worked with R&D in the past, and that goes beautifully. 

The installation is quite straightforward. Then, the implementation is based on one project, so it cannot go wrong.  This is for a very quick start. You will need more skilled people in your projects for implementation if you want reporting, traceability between requirement tests and defects, and release management. 

I always see ALM as an enterprise solution, so I don't go for the project implementation. You also need to maintain it. If one project has an issue, it may be very different in another project. There's also an issue when you have a user who is working multiple projects. E.g., where does the user have an issue? From a maintenance perspective, project implementation is not very handy so I always try to treat it as an enterprise solution, not as a project solution.

Testing time has decreased for manual execution because tests are being executed with UFT.

ROI is very difficult to say. If you don't test, you don't know how good or poor your quality is, but effective testing always costs money. However, it is very important for your return investment to know the value of your tests. What I've seen until now is that it's not being monitored that much. We have this tool because we need to test and prove the quality of the tests that we have been doing, but there will always be bugs and defects in production.

The solution has the ability to handle a large number of projects and users in an enterprise environment with the correct license.

Most vendors offer the same pricing, though some vendors offer a cheaper price for their cloud/SaaS solution versus their on-premise. However, cloud/SaaS solutions result in a loss of freedom. E.g., if you want to make a change, most of the time it needs to be validated by the vendor, then you're being charged an addition fee. Sometimes, even if you are rejected, you are charged because it's a risk to the entire environment.

With IBM Rational Quality Manager, you need to stick to the rough process and first train your end user versus ALM Quality Center's basic features, which are very easy to understand.

Make sure you have your build requirements and which features are important. Are you running projects for DevOps, agile, etc.? Also, make sure that you can evolve your tooling and not stay on the same tooling for years, knowing that your business users grow faster and have different needs.

Micro Focus does invest enough, but most investments are now going towards ALM Octane. I've seen that they are investing in adapters where you can say, "We're going to migrate from ALM.net to ALM Octane," if not entirely, then partially. There will always be projects in ALM.net, and they will keep maintaining ALM.net because there are many customers on it. Customers do need to realize that IT is changing and that you need to modernize as well.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10), though I would rate it less for DevOp/agile.

We use this solution for model testing and as a central location for the test case responses and some test automation.

Central test locations are a benefit. The ability to integrate this solution with other applications is helpful. If there is automation, it comes with improved quality and speed.

This solution is open and very easy to integrate. The interface is good too.

There needs to be improvement in the requirement samples. At the moment, they are very basic.

They could also improve the usability.

I find the system very stable. There is very little downtime.

This solution is scalable. There is the ability to draw on the different platforms, especially with ALM Octane. However, I am more interested in the new hard platforms, so more of a container platform or solution. This is on their roadmap in the next three years, so at least there is a plan for it.

It is very good. We are located in Germany, and they have a service partner here. The fix given to us depends on the complexity of the problem, but usually we get answers within a day.

If someone is researching solutions, they should know that this solution is stable, centralized, and scalable. If they need integration, then this is the tool to use.

When selecting a vendor, some important criteria are availability, knowledge, price, and the site where they are getting the product. For example, if we have people doing a project as a team, then it is best if the solution can work in different languages, like German and English.

Definitely the testing. My app test case organization, being able to organize it, and standardize a quality program.

Definitely ease the complexity of the tool: the upgrading part of the tool. It needs to be easier.

Also, it needs easier integrations. I know one of the big reasons we did upgrades to the ALM upgrade license was because you could use Octane, which Tasktop is giving free for a year. That helps integrate with some of our other tools. I think as our organization, one of our biggest challenges is, we have all of these different tools, and getting them to talk to each other. To really have a whole encompassing pipeline, that is our challenge.

Five years.

We don't really have downtime, but we do have where it crashes here and there. So, stability is not great, but okay.

It does not meet our needs. The product is very geared towards waterfall. Very stable, standard things, and as an organization, we want to be innovative. We want to try new things, and it just doesn't seem to do that easily.

It's okay. We've had to escalate things a few times to get answers, but they have provided them in the end.

Setup and upgrades are complex.

Probably one of my biggest issues with the product is that it's so complex and hard to do. We even paid $30,000 for a consultant to come in. One year in, then we wanted this upgrade again, and they wanted to have a consultant come in again. I'm like, "We just did!"

So, we decided, "We're going to try it without it," and so far it's going well, but the complexity of it seems to be daunting to engineers, not like other tools that they implement and upgrade.

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.