OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

You can plan ahead with all the requirements and the test lab set it up as a library, then go do multiple testing times, recording the default that's in the system. Later, go back to check the coverage you are missing, so you can plan ahead and maybe reuse the same set as next time. Sort of like creating templates and reusing them over and over.

We use the quality engineering testing tool plus the defect tracking to make our reports, projects, and quality better. Once we had the evidence to approve all the testing and all the coverage, the reporting went better. Usually, the products make it much easier to identify the issues we have.

It is nice, but it does have some weaknesses. It's a bit hard to go back and change the requirement tool after setup.

It's not flexible enough. The formatting is also an issue. For example, the project manager doesn't like the use it, even for requirements, because it's not easy for them to change it. If they make a mistake and go back, it is hard to change the formatting to make it good. So, they have to share or use another one that try to upload. But, after the upload, you cannot change it because the IDs are identified. It's hard for them to work somewhere in-between, adding something in there, then keep the rest of them record is still linked well.

It's difficult to change it. Let's say you set up the requirement, if you change the requirement, by adding any on bottom which won't cause an issue, but I want to add it in central somewhere, then you mess up all the linkage for the test plan and test lab.

This requirement piece is what I think is the biggest disadvantage for the Quality Center. I do know Micro Focus does have a bunch of the new tools, but that depends if a customer wants to change it, use a new tool or stay on an older tool.

Reporting is a bit complicated. They have a standard report, but if I don't want to use that, I have to use the Excel reporter.

I have used it for the start of the implementation at our organization using Quality Center versions: 8, 9, 10, and now, we're on 11.5.

We host it in-house, so basically we don't have any bad downtime. It runs mostly 24/7, so Quality Center is pretty good with stability.

So far, it hasn't been an issue.

I would give them a high score as they do a pretty good job.

In the Quality Center, there's a tool, which we started with, QuickTest Pro. From there, we started to use QuickTest Pro, later we introduced and evaluated it. It looked like the situation we needed.

However, we wanted tracking. We started with QuickTest Pro, but now we're doing this, which includes a lot of the different areas, like it handles the workflow and/or agile and involving many necessary departments.

I was involved in the initial setup. I installed configure, manager, and the patch providing user access, though now we have a team.

The setup is straightforward. It's not hard to set up. We even used the multi-complicated one because we didn't want have the database alone.

To someone looking at Quality Center, I would tell them: It's a good tool to use and the support is good. However, if you want a fancy and modernized tool with a fancy outlook, then Quality Center is not a good tool for you.

Most important criteria when choosing a vendor: personal style. I want to know who will be continually knowledgeable.

• They know what they are selling.
• They respond back quickly with accurate information.

If someone talks to me, and I try a few times, but I cannot get clear information from them, I may disqualify this vendor completely.

The most valuable thing about the solution is it handles requirements, tests, and defects in one tool.

Most departments and some of our third-party vendors have access, so HPE ALM can be the single source of truth for what we are doing and how things are going.

How they organize content could be improved greatly in an out-of-box way, at least as a possibility for the users. The simplistic folder capability for reqs/tests doesn’t lead the users to a very productive method of test management.

It would be better to have suggested methods such as storing by subject/feature/functional area and to lead users into organizing this way. Then you wouldn’t run into the need to move things around in folders when release schedules/versions change.

Also, the style by which you document your regression tests is more automatic since you stop copying tests to a new folder for each release.

We have used this solution for two years.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.

The level of technical support is very good.

I’ve been around a while and designed a few test management and automation solutions while I was with Motorola. I think our solutions were better, but of course, we had to spend a lot of resources on their creation.

The initial setup was straightforward, as I’m new to US Cellular and the tool/processes were in place when I got here. We are making some changes to drive improvement, but we are also analyzing how to go agile which isn’t easy.

I think HPE tools are too expensive, but dumping them for shareware tools, like JIRA, Selenium, etc., is also very dangerous and is not a silver bullet.

It’s too expensive for most organizations compared to some other tools on the market. I’d look at QASymphony, Borland, and of course IBM, before committing to any of them.

Most valuable to us is the ability to have the system organized into distinct roles and sections. That way, we can grant different users access to the specific section they need to access. We have business users that only need to run tests, so they only need that small section of the application. We have the BA's, product trainers, who only care about the requirements.

It has made our development process more professional. The whole interim process is a lot more professional. You can align it with the development life cycles, get the developers to buy in, and try and get it all linked in to the TFS Visual Studio.

Integration is also important to us. You've got Sprinter, which is quite nice for those that aren't familiar with what they've got to do. It's a nice little guide. Also, you can link it in with performance and automation tools, and kick things off with the push of a button.

New development methodologies, such as continuous integration and kanban boards, are being implemented by Microsoft and others to try to get their tools into the testing profession. ALM's got to push back and think more about the overall end-to-end development process. It's very much still a testing tool. We have a few awkward links rather than being a full solution.HPE ALM lacks a few of these features, but for a testing focus tool, helping to ensure quality, I think it's really good. It's good at its core necessities.

It's very stable at the moment. We're not on the most recent version. We have been using version 1201 for 2 ½ years. I did the upgrade, and I found it easy for me to do, because I'd done the previous upgrade as well. The documentation from HPE isn't that great if you don't know what it means. It’s been stable, but I say that, because I did the install.

Scalability is good.

Technical support is good. We've had to get quite deep down in some incidents, so we've actually managed to get through to third level support and speak to the developers. At that point, you're both talking the same language. They can understand your issues and you get good resolution if it gets to that level.

I was not involved in the initial setup back in those days. A couple contractors did it. It was called TestDirector in those days. I'm going to have a look at the new HPE ALM Octane later.

Their licensing model is expensive. We could scale it up and use it everywhere, but then, you look at how much it would cost for the licenses and you really think, "Is it worth it?"

I was not involved with the decision process, but I did put a case together to continue using it. Our parent company was trying to push us to use Microsoft TFS. I was basically showing how much better ALM is over TFS. For what we were using it for, it's just much better than TFS. It was the testing tool of choice.

Try and have a play with it and don't be afraid to customize. We've got this big workflow in ours, so you can control the rules a lot better as to who can do what, who has access, and what they can see. Out of the box, it's a bit vanilla and there's the risk that someone could be given wrong permissions and accidentally do something they shouldn't.

We use it for managing requirements, testing, and defects.

What they do best is test management. That's their strong point.

HP-QC does not support Agile. It is designed for Waterfall. This is the number one issue that we're facing right now, which is why we want to look for another tool.

We're a pharmaceutical services company, so we require electronic signatures in a tool, but this functionality isn't available in HP-QC. We don't have 21 CFR, Part 11, electronic signatures, and we need compliant electronic signatures.

Some of the ALM tools can toggle between tabular format and document format for requirements, but the same feature is not available in this solution. There is also no concept of base-lining or versioning. It doesn't exist.

I have been using this solution since 2010.

It is glitching now. We have an older version, and it doesn't work well with the latest version of Windows. It hangs a lot.

It is pretty easy to ask for additional memory. It is implemented in Azure, so we can just ask for additional space.

We have concurrent licenses. If we count the number of users, we have around 350 users. They use it on a daily basis.

Our license was procured through SAP. It was indirectly purchased, so it is very difficult to contact the technical team. We have to go through SAP to get feedback on our issues. Support is difficult, not very friendly, just because we have an indirect relationship with Micro Focus.

This is the first one that our company used.

It was simple enough. It did not take much time. The first time we used it only for testing. When we used it for requirements management, it was a little bit more difficult, and we had to re-train our users on how to use the tool.

The tool was simple enough to learn by using the manuals. I learned how to configure the tool, and I conducted the company-wide training. I maintain and configure the system.

It is very expensive as compared to other tools. We didn't get their premier version. It is a lesser version, and to upgrade, there will be an additional cost for us. 

I would recommend others to find another tool because the interface itself is very outdated. It looks very '90s. There are a lot of better, cheaper tools out there. That's all I can say.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a five out of ten. It must have version control and electronic signatures.

We use this solution for test management purposes. For sorting set cases, testing for possible defects, executions, and so on.

Defect management is very good. It's not a lightweight solution, you can do a lot of customization with respect to the workflow. It also definitely supports the waterfall model.

Only Internet Explorer is supported. That is a big problem. They don't support Chrome and Firefox and so on.

The browser limitation is the biggest problem —  nobody wants to use IE in this world.

The browser issue is a big deal because it doesn't work on Mac. That's a game-changer, but now, I assume they have come up with a giant tool, ALM Octane.

It would be great if they brought the waterfall model with ALM Octane, or created a new interface as such. 

I have been using ALM for roughly 10 years.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very stable solution.

The technology itself is a little outdated — previous generation technology. Patching and other things can be a little difficult. 

It's also very scalable.

Regarding technical support, one word comes to mind: terrible.

I don't expect everybody to know everything, but there have been instances when I had to tell them the answer and they'll tell it back to me; however, of course, there are some knowledgeable people working there too. Sometimes it's very good, sometimes it's very bad — there is no in-between.

The initial setup was a little complex. For example, compared to installing Oracle applications, ALM is straightforward and easy.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is very expensive. Personally, I think that it's too expensive, but I don't have another tool to compare it to.

For anyone who supports the waterfall model, this is a great tool. I would not say that it's not a good tool. It is a great tool for managing processes and tests. It's very stable, but you will see some glitches here and there — that's inevitable. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give ALM a rating of seven.

I use 80 to 90 percent of the product's features. 

• It has a good response time.
• The AI and functionality interface are useful. 
• The task management reporting has a lot of out-of-the box uses.

Certain features are lousy. Those features can drag the whole server down. There are times that the complex SQL queries are not easy to do within this solution. 

Micro Focus ALM needs to bring the features of this ALM into the newer version of Octane. 

ALM can scale and is very impressive. It can support thousands of users with a very low amount of resources. It can easily manage very big projects within thousands of people at a time. It allows and disables scale, supporting front-end operations and task management at different levels. 

The initial setup is quite easy, if you know what you are doing. 

It allows us to keep our costs low. I do not want to pay beyond a certain point for this solution.

All the modules that we have in ALM, one of them is the test module. No better tool in the market than ALM because the foundation is what you see, it's been in the market for so long. I really like the test module.

But it's not only limited to the test module. It is the entire application that's a management tool. So we use it for requirements as well. And the link is between your requirements and your test waves and test plans, and everything is in there. So it's a pretty good tool.

If you don't use any tool to manage your application people will - like some teams we have who use Microsoft Word documents to do their requirements, and Excel sheets to plan their test cases, and write the test case and then execute and store it. In the long run, that is not going to be helpful because this is a structured way of exhibiting your development. That is what had been missed.

So when we started using ALM in our organization - we'd been using QC for so long - when we finally started using ALM and we tied the requirements module to the testing module, that definitely benefited. It's because we can show a lot of data in there and now we can link to some 15 years of back data. Most of the applications are there from so long, so we still need to do the core functionality test. But we don't need to redesign and we don't need to search for Excel sheets. We know exactly who ran it, when they ran it, how the execution happened.

We do have some suggestions on reporting. Most of the time we need to download data and then we create reports ourselves. If there was a little bit better reporting available that would be great. The reporting is the one thing that we definitely want them to do more on.

Yes and no. Once in a while we'll have some bugs and they will fix them, but other than that it's pretty stable.

We have assessed ALM right now to be pretty stable. I don't see too many things that are missing in ALM right now.

Scalability is good. So far we have not had any issues with scalability. For the last three years we were using it as SaaS. Before that, for a while we had on-prem, but after moving to SaaS we have never had any problems. We run around 300 projects, we have about 100 projects which are light. We've got, at most, 100 users at any given time.

We've used it multiple times. One of the reasons is the SAP tab. There is this plug-in that connects with SAP, and whenever we do an upgrade or something we need to test with the SAP tab, and the software has been very helpful in doing that.

I already know the response that we get from support. We have a dedicated CSO who engages whenever we need something, when we sat we need this report, we need that data, then he will definitely immediately give us that.

No. It's been there about three years. I wasn't part of the team at that time.

If you are using ALM, you had best educate your users to use the entire solution, not only the testing module or not only requirements module, because you will have way more benefit using the entire tool. It is designed to supplement the entire lifecycle and will definitely improve your productivity and traceability. If you use bits and pieces of the tool then the whole intention of developing the tool is not fully utilized. So use entire module, all the modules in ALM.

We are using ALM especially in business process testings because this solution helps us to connect the business mindset with our business analytics and the IT perspective. When we ran several years ago classical tests business did not understand the quality of our application. When we began to talk with the business process, it helped improve communication between business and IT.

The business value from Octane has benefited us. We see that it can combine all third parties together, free software, integrate all tools together, and create a single pipeline for development.

The previous version of ALM had a greater functionality regarding test cases. Not automatic, BBT and so on, but now in ALM Octane we have only manual testing and integration with other tools.

I think we need to increase functionality to help us to run testing. When we run the ALM project so I think I can give it a better score after we assess our experience.

Stability is OK as we installed the superior version, and now we are in our testing environment. We are investigating the process how best to use it. I heard that we can download a new version and I think after this conference we can begin our pilot project for the real team because we have several areas for implementing developments and several comments.

We have 10,000 employees. There is a huge IT staff so we need tools that can help us to collaborate with each other.

We have used HP technical support for resolving cases and we also asked help from Presales in HP Russia. These guys resolved our problems and helped us to install ALM Octane in our environment.

When we installed it we had a problem because it's running on Linux and we needed to create our infrastructure for installing Linux which was a big problem. The previous version of ALM was working on Windows. But we resolved these problems.