OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

We are using the solution for multiple purposes: test management, defect tracking, traceability, requirement tracking, and test execution.

We're regulated by the FDA so the number of manual signatures and paper-based signatures was reduced. We have had less waste, have been able to collaborate more, and have saved time.

In future releases I'd like to see better reporting, a more simplified UI, and improved metrics. It would also good if they removed some features to simplify the solution. It only supports internet explorer right now, so it would be good if it could support other browsers. Browser costs are also fairly high.

Pretty stable.

It has been fairly scalable.

HP support is good and they are very responsive. They're not world class, but they're good.

We used Word documents, which was not efficient.

Though we only purchased ALM less than a year ago, we believe ROI is good.

Prospective buyers should know that it doesn’t support all browsers and that browser costs are high.

I primarily use the models from Quality Center. The requirements, the plan, lab, and effects, et cetera. I use it to merge my entire cycle of debts.

One feature that is very nice that our team uses a lot is the Excel add-in. It's a tool with add-ins, extra models, that you can use to export and import data from Excel, Microsoft Excel. It's been extremely useful for us.

The solution overall is very good and very solid. It's robust.

The stability is very good.

In the world of agile, the solution needs to make testing better. They need to arrange their tests with a very high speed of tests. Quality Center is a little bit old in terms of approach. It needs to be modernized. I have to go through many cycles, et cetera, in order to register everything correctly. I need more flexibility to adapt to the new methodology of agile for Excel. That will require more speed. Currently, due to the relative slowness, takes a lot of time to use the tools very well. 

If the solution could create a lighter, more flexible tool with more adaptability to new methodologies such as agile, it would be great.

I was in contact with my support team here, and there is a new release of Quality Center for agile. That is called Quality Center Octane. However, my support team has not made it available to me yet. I was waiting to see the new version of Quality Center Octane, to see if it would have more flexibility in agile. 

I've been using the solution for about ten years now. It's been a decade. It's been a long time.

The stability is very good. It has very good capabilities. It is 99.99% stable. We haven't had issues with bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash and freeze. It's good.

The scalability of the solution is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can.

We have about 1,000 users on the solution.

Technical support is a black box. It's not good. When I look into things on the site, it's very difficult to find the information and help I need. On a scale from one to ten, I'd say it is a five.

We tend to get support from offices based in America, and we are in Brazil. It's my understanding that there isn't a team here in Brazil. Central support may be in Honduras. I've only gotten through one time. 

They need to do better. We aren't satisfied with the level of service or the process that has to happen before we can get help.

I'm not sure how easy or difficult the initial setup is. I don't know due to the fact that the setup is done by a support team and I am on the side of the user. To set up and maintain the tools on the server is not my job. I also do not know how long it takes to deploy the product. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to comment on it effectively.

That said, to install a new station on the client-side, not the server side, is very quick.

My company is just an end-user and customer. We aren't a reseller or partner.

I'm using a variation of version 12. It may be version 12.3.

If you have a large enterprise like me (I work in a bank and there are 10,000 people who work here) and have a large setup, this solution is very solid. For a minor company that is a smaller startup of maybe 10 or 20 people, it's a good idea to use another tool that is more flexible. 

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

You can do your development from start to finish: starting with the requirements, ending with defects, and testing in-between having everything in one tool and be able to validate everything up and down in the SDLC.

Over the years, we've used this tool extensively in quality assurance, so they can record the test cases. They do whatever they need to do to execute the test cases, then report on what they've done, and how many defects have appeared. If they've gone out of production, then they've actually been able to shorten the time for QA, shorten the time for development, and lessened the amount of defects that actually get out to production.

The downside is that the Quality Center's only been available on Windows for years, but not on Mac. There's not any solution to any platform or browser. That's been a problem and people have been going to other tools because of it.

I've been using this product for about 18 years.

To a certain extent. We've had some projects that have gotten very large, to the point where one of them has become unsustainable, and we had to split it up to upgrade it to the next version.

The install itself, a lot of the DLLs and a lot of the times we get some updates, like Microsoft updates, cause issues with the tool itself. I think it can be improved, but if it's going to be a Windows program, something different than .net or something that's going to be more futuristic or really more inline with the technology of today.

We have a SaaS solution right now. At one point, we were on-premise. When we were on-premise, we had premier support, which was phenomenal because we got immediate attention. The support that's not premier support, it is not so good.

People don't take advantage of a lot of the functionality that the tool has. I think overall it's a very good tool for what it does.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: They know me, and I know them, so having a very good relationship and a very good rapport is very important. If I need help, I can go to certain people, and I can get help.

• Traceability from requirements to executed tests and fixed defects
• Visibility and reporting on test execution

In the case of the software development company, the use of HPE QC helped us to become compliant with GAMP and ISO requirements. The process of developing the software had to meet the regulatory requirements FDA 21 CFR Part 11.

• Reporting.
• Project setup and maintenance.
• The user interface is dated and not terribly intuitive.

I used HPQC at a software development company for about six years. We upgraded it once from 9 to 10. As far as I know, they are still using that version, because the modifications they have made over the years would make it too difficult to upgrade.

I don’t remember any deployment issues. The R&D department at the software development company handled all the install and setup.

I don’t remember any stability issues (it was over five years ago that I was at that company).

I did not encounter any scalability issues. We regularly ran test sets with over 60,000 test steps.

The response from HPE is almost non-existent. Most of our issues were fixed by the company's R&D section.

The switch to HPE QC was made because the existing system was not considered GAMP-compliant.

The software development company spent considerable resources in getting the system set up correctly using modifications developed in-house, as well as developing user guides that we could use for training users of the system.

An in-house team implemented it.

It is totally over-priced.

We had to modify the product considerably to get it to do what we wanted, especially reporting. It never did fully meet our needs for traceability back to user-readable requirements documentation.

The tool provides invaluable bi-directional traceability from requirement --> test case--> test execution --> defect.

The ability to have visibility of manual and automated test results within the one product certainly cuts down on the management overhead and eases the creation of project health reports.

The UI is becoming somewhat dated but that shouldn't be a deal breaker.

Out of the box, the tool is very flexible in what it allows the user to do. This can go against data integrity in a regulated world but the tool can be customised to improve data integrity. For example, you could customise the tool's workflow to ensure tests cannot be re-executed after a set of executed tests have been peer reviewed.

• Test case creation
• Test case execution
• Base lining
• Requirements

It is useful in test-case maintenance as it helps with traceability.

I used it for two years.

Not that I am aware of.

The stability of the product is good.

No issues encountered.

I had little to no interaction with customer service.

It's good.

We figured out HP ALM is good and switched from using Excel spreadsheets.

It's straightforward. The user guide provides detailed steps on installation.

We used an in-house team to implement.

We also looked at MTM – Microsoft Test Manager.

If the company plans to use QTP/UFT then HP QC/ALM is a great option. UFT integrates with ALM and we can run test cases remotely.

• Test Plan: Script storage and update.
• Test Lab: Execution planning and results storage.

Because of global test documentation, testing can be resourced most effectively each test cycle (including outsourcing).

Integration with test automation never worked properly. We were never able to run test automation on the SaaS platform. We ended up having to use QC 10 for test automation. We went through several "fixes", upgrades, etc., and were never able to fix the problem.

My guess would be 18 years at least.

Use of test automation with ALM is inherently unstable.

The parts that work seem to scale very well. But our use of test automation appears to have exceeded what this tool can do with that functionality.

Tech support is very, very poor. There is no coordination between product groups, you have to repeat the same information multiple times, features that are "fixed" end up breaking in the next release, and releases and upgrades do not fix problems as promised.

No.

We have installed multiple versions and upgrades over the years and it can be very cumbersome.

It can be expensive to own.

No.

Can be beneficial for large companies, but check out alternatives. Some of them might fit the bill for less money.

• Traceability from requirements to executed tests and fixed defects
• Visibility and reporting on test execution

It gave us control over the development of requirements and tests needed for the bank's transition from bespoke back-end systems to an Oracle banking system.

The user interface is still dated. Writing test scripts in HPE ALM is generally avoided as the interface is too awkward to use. At the software development company where I worked, the test scripts were routinely created in Excel and uploaded into Quality Center. This process was seen as much more productive than using the HPE QC interface.

At the bank where I worked, I was responsible for training and supporting the end user testers. I constantly found myself defending the way HPE ALM worked. When executing tests, the users would get themselves lost, would expect an action to have taken place when it had not, had lots of problems logging defects, had problems getting screenshots into a defect, and understanding and using favourites.

The interface they have developed is quite good at the top level, i.e., grouping into Requirements, Test Cases, Test Execution, and Defect Management. However, once you get into each area, the complexity of the application kicks in. There is no 'flow' of the basic functionality. For example, in Requirements, the basic function is to create requirements and link them. There should be a wizard that guides the user through that process, which includes suggestions about grouping and structuring, etc. Instead, you are just left dangling.

Another example: Test cases are to be written or modified, linked, selected for execution, and executed. Test execution in particular is a prime candidate for 'wizard-like' guidance for the tester. A much-clearer indication of where the test execution is up to by test set and test case as well the test steps would be most helpful.

What do I mean by 'flow'? Based on my own application development experience, the basic function(s) of the application should be obvious to the user and the easiest to perform. Extra functionality steps are seen as and executed as digressions from the standard flow. I realize that this is not easy in a product as complex as HPE ALM that has been hacked together by several companies and many developers over the years, which I guess is the reason it is the way it is.

We imported a large number of tests and requirements and found a few 'gotchas' on the way, but generally it filled our needs at the bank that I was working at the time.

I used HPE ALM at the bank for 9-10 months.

We had a number of issues with importing the requirements and test cases we had created in Excel. Mind you, we were using a very complicated setup in Excel.

We only encountered stability issues in the importing from Excel. Things would not go quite as smoothly as expected; quite a few emails back and forth to the local supplier.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

The local supplier Assurity were good.

The local suppliers were very good, but if it was something that had to go back to HPE, forget it.

We were using Excel spreadsheets to try and test a major system change in a bank. Need I say more?

At the bank, the setup took the local supplier over two days to complete. The issues were mostly around meshing into the bank's security and local IT systems.

The vendor was okay. The person sent in to do the installation was very knowledgeable on the product.

It is totally over-priced.

I did not evaluate other options. The system was picked by the QA manager at the time, based on his experience with the product.

I think it is over-priced and would recommend looking carefully at other options.