OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

• Requirements
• Test Plan/Lab 
• Defects
• The sprinter is a great feature in the manual runner.
• Reporting
• Analysis
• Version Control
• Exporting and Importing
• Document Generator
• Defects Synchronization to other tools like Borland StarTeam and JIRA, for example

Accessibility! The reason I gave it a 9 not 10, is that I doesn’t support Apple machines or any browsers other than IE, and even then, later than IE 10! This is a big problem if the development team who should be working on defects are using Apple machines, which is very common. This is also a big problem for us if higher management wants to take a look on defects for one reason or the other. They are usually on the run and can’t access it using their iPads, for example.

This is a problem that JIRA solved, and it's now practically accessible from any browser on any type of operating system, and can be opened on a cellphone/tablet browser or through mobile applications. It’s perfect when it comes to accessibility and this is what Quality Center desperately needs.

I have been using it for more than six years.

Performance issues are very common. The degradation of performance and consequent failures continuously happen. “Failed to Login” errors are common as well, and some random issues like creating the issue twice and deleting one deletes the other, etc.

No issues encountered.

It's the perfect tool for testing purposes, but you need to consider other options if development teams do not use the environments supported by Quality Center.

• 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 Management
• Reporting
• Defect Management
• RTM
• Requirement Management

Quality Center has helped my organization in monitoring the testing process and improving productivity. The test execution and creation monitoring feature in Quality Center is one of the most advanced features available in the industry. You can easily track the testing process as minute as test cases executed on a particular system.

Almost all of the areas are very advanced, but one module which needs improvement is report extraction, and billing module is missing.

I've used it for eight years.

No issues encountered.

Too many users logged in at a particular time affects the Quality Center response time dramatically.

No issues encountered.

It's excellent.

It's excellent.

There was no previous solution was in place.

It was very easy and straightforward.

We used a mix of an in-house team and a vendor team.

We've seen ROI, but I can't share any specifics.

Pricing is high, but with new tools available in the market at a lower price, it is worth doing a decision analysis and resolution.

• Mantis
• JIRA

There are so many other tools available in market, so before investing a huge amount in Quality Center, you should analyze other tools as well.

The ability to show end-to-end tractability between requirements, tests, defects, and also reporting.

Allows us to have a single source of truth for our test efforts.

The reporting could be a little more robust.

I have used this version since June 2015. However, I have used this product since 1999, when it was Test Director 6.0.

Very infrequently.

Not so far, no.

A seven out of 10.

No. We have used Quality Center/ALM since I joined this organization.

A little complex as it pertains to migrating databases, then manually linking them back up to the file repositories.

In my current role, I don't advise anyone about pricing and licensing for this product.

This product was already in-house when I joined my company.

If you go the on-premise route, make sure your system architects and DBAs thoroughly review the installation/upgrade guide. I would also advise establishing a "center of excellence" department which can help build template projects and enforce standards so the users are all using similarly configured projects.

• 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.

Defect Management, Test Management, MS Excel Reporting, Analysis Graphs.

Allowed us to centralize our test efforts from end to end so that we have a single source of truth for all of our test artifacts and data.

As an administrator, the ability to add users to their appropriate user groups from inside of the Site Administrator tool instead of having to log into the ALM project itself to make that user group assignment would be HUGE!

Since 1999 when the product was known as Test Director.

Just when folks forgot to check in their assets before migrating / upgrading existing projects.

Not so far, no.

Not so far, no.

Good.

Good.

Have been using a version of this solution since 1999. Have not used competing products day to day as of yet.

No.

In house.

I don't have exact figures, but we are saving time and money using this solution.

ALM allows everyone to work at the same time, doing defects and reporting the same way.

ALM is quite heavy to use because of the process. Everybody needs to do the same process at the same time, and that’s quite heavy. We get a lot of complaints from customers that they're forced to use a process that is so heavy.

It's not always very stable, but that depends on how you implement it in your organization. We put it on a separate server host in Singapore managed by our guys in Bangalore, so they make sure that they’re always available first.

We have a lot of people using it and it works fine.

Technical support is quite good, but sometimes it depends on who you’re dealing with. Sometimes you have bad luck and get a guy who doesn't know much about it, is new, or is in training, but most of the time it’s fine.

ALM is a bit complex since it's scalable and everybody needs to use it. With everyone needing it, you have to open the firewalls to everyone, which makes it complex.

• Test Plan
• Test Execution
• Defects tab
• Mapping tests to requirements
• Reporting

The reports we can generate are better.

The performance needs work, as over the past couple years, where I have worked with large companies, I noticed slower response times.

I have used HP ALM and Quality Center and TestDirector for 18 years.

There were some issues.

It is stable in its functionality, but there is some slowness with its performance.

It seems to function with very large companies, but sometimes there seems to be a slower response time, and it could be an internal network issue within the company, but I'm not sure.

I have not had to work with the customer service.