What needs improvement with Micro Focus ALM Octane?

The tool's price is high, making it an area where improvement is high.

Promoting it more could help a lot of projects. It's time-saving and efficient, and I'm sure it will benefit projects with safe implementation in place. Octane is a good choice for companies using the safe portal.

The product's requirements management feature needs enhancement in terms of functionality. Also, the release management feature needs expansion.

Improvement-wise, I think that the tool needs to be made more flexible and easy to integrate with the rest of the tools in the SDLC ecosystem. There are some challenges when we want to integrate the tool with other products, and it takes time for a team to figure out how to do it.

The solution should improve by adding scrum board-like functionality.

In terms of improvements, it would be beneficial for Micro Focus ALM Octane to have the ability to interface with newer page tools that support DevOps for operations and testing. Currently, Micro Focus ALM Octane is considered an old-world tool in the industry and lacks the perception of being a new-age tool among its customers. Changing this perception is necessary to improve the reputation of ALM Octane in the industry.

There is no question that everything can improve. I like their smart analytics; perhaps they should continue to expand and improve there because it's a fantastic start. And I enjoy the testing, especially the automated testing capabilities, so just keep improving on what they have.

Though Micro Focus ALM Octane doesn't have much of a bug, it lacks integration with some solutions. For example, my company has fairly new software, but it can't be integrated with Micro Focus ALM Octane, so integration with other software, particularly with less popular software, could be improved. Micro Focus ALM Octane also requires a lot of resources during its setup, and I find this another area for improvement. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the ability to customize the interface, especially when doing a manual test.

Generally, we’d like more adoption of the solution in our industry. We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers. These are certifications. Certification for Platform One and specifically for the product ALM Octane, Platform One/Iron Bank certification would be ideal. My understanding is it just so happens that that's the roadmap.

I haven't been impressed with the reporting from a requirements matrix and a traceability perspective. ALM has always lacked in this area. They come at it more from a Waterfall testing perspective, and less from a Sprint-based perspective. It's in those areas that we use Jira with some of our development teams. We ran into roadblocks due to the sheer number of users, around 1,500 people using the tool, carrying out testing, and ensuring that people understand the requirements. I think they need to look at ways of innovating and finding the wow factor with more flexibility and agility in development, but they've never really been good at handling that which is why we stick with Jira. There hasn't been much investment in the tool and there are definitely some areas that can be improved upon.

From my personal point of view, what could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its integration with Jira. The latest version of the platform could have that integration by now, but at least our version doesn't have that integration with Jira. We're using Jira for our user storage and the whole agile part of a software development lifecycle. We don't have that Jira integration, so the testing and the definition of user storage are separate. We're moving more and more towards the agile software development lifecycle, and we chose to stick to Jira, so what I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Octane is Jira integration.

I have yet to experience the CI/CD part of Micro Focus ALM Octane but as demonstrated by the team who is providing the services, I see that the CI/CD could improve. When we check in the code, for the code snippet that has been checked in by a particular user, you need to open a separate file. When comparing Micro Focus ALM Octane to Jira, they have a separate window in which you can click on the ID and the code is visible in the snippet. It's a two-step process in Micro Focus ALM Octane and it's a single-step process in Jira. It's essential for the developers to think about this difference.

Areas for improvement would be installation and configuration. In the next release, I would like them to include simpler to read documentation or an installation engine like UFT or LoadRunner provide. I would also like to see integration with all continuous integration tools on the market, now it has many of them onboarded but this market grows fast and many other new CI/CD products appear.

The limitation of Octane is that we can't do a release outside of the sprint. We can only plan the release in the sprint. With Agile and JIRA tools, we can plan the release outside the sprint and do a global release of all the projects from the sprint. It would be helpful if Octane had a portfolio follow feature so we could follow the project portfolio. We need the all-view of a project to track it step-by-step and stay on deadline.

An area that needs improvement is the dashboard - particularly the lack of ability to compare data on a single graph. This means that you need to switch to another product instead of being able to do everything within a single tool. Performance and filtering could also be improved.

It would help us if ALM Octane got FedRAMP-certified, so our government departments could use the cloud solution. That way our external consultants could access it. We've created a URL to get to it, but if it were FedRAMP-certified and service and had support in the continental United States, that would be better. In the government space, we need organizations or companies to be FedRAMP-certified, and the system must reside in the continental United States. The Micro Focus help desk and their environment are not located in the continental United States, so they do not meet the state's criteria for us to be on the cloud. I understand that the company is working on some FedRAMP certifications and is looking to do that because they cannot put all of their government customers in their cloud environment. It's not a technology issue. It's a security issue.

The elements in filtering need to be improved, meaning the number of filters I can use in widgets or in the grid views in parallel. There's a limitation which bothers a lot of our users. Filtering in text, or having a complex filter is limited. In a given field, for example, I can use a filter only once. I cannot say, "Include the values 1, 2, and 3, and exclude value 17." This is not possible but we have requested it often. And in general, widgets should be more flexible and more sophisticated, with the ability to layer two different widgets. There is also room for improvement in the amount of test cases which are available for certain filter conditions and a given widget, versus what was worked off already. Also, when it comes to getting reports out of it, and maybe this is a little bit specific to the automotive industry, there are certain requirements by law where we have to export the test results for the final software delivery and create PDF reports which are stored for 15 or 20 years. Creating reports in PDF, or PowerPoint which then become PDF at the end of the day, is something which could be improved a lot. We're working on it with Micro Focus in every single release as new features are added.

ALM Octane is working to soon provide comment information, so we would really be able to see what piece of code was committed for a user story or feature. We are really looking forward to this, because it's going to give us a bit more traceability and transparency. They don't support all IDEs yet. We have Visual Studio code, which is not supported, and loved by our developers. This integration is missing. We also had to do our own in-house integration with the Confluence. That is also something that they could add. There are small things, like hiding different columns when it comes to the board. Currently, whatever workflow items you have defined in the board, you can collapse them, but a collapse line still appears. These small things would make a difference. In certain areas, ALM Octane has a limitation how many items can be displayed. So, if I group something, then I'm limited to the number of items which I can see. Also, if I want to export in Excel, there is a limitation onis lines. I know it's 5000. Maybe the number is quite high, but if they could improve on those limits, that would be good.

There aren't major things that need improvement. It's more detailed things, minor tweaks and improvements. For example, updating items, sorting, bulk updates—these things could have a bit more flexibility, but it's still possible to do them. Also, for training, the proposed graphs in the dashboards could have some more explanation about what they're doing because not everyone is using the same metrics. This is more a training or knowledge thing, not a lack in the tool, and I already addressed it with my Micro Focus contact. They improved some of the things I had on my list in the newest version. I haven't dug through the newest version fully yet.

Security and security management, meaning the integration of the security, could be enhanced. We know about Fortify, but it would be better to have security features in the original Octane platform without the need for another solution or another application.

It could use just some small improvements. I would like additional features, like planning features, user story mapping, or connection to collaboration tools.

The reporting needs to be improved and allow for customization. I want to build my own widgets, but I don't want to use the ones already in the system. I want to build mine from scratch. From the database point of view along with how we see the reporting, they use old data. Also, there are sometimes limitations due to their license restrictions. If we want to share our tests with other teams, extracting different tests out of the system, those tests come out as a script where the content will be something like a binary format type of text.

The cluster architecture that we implemented was server to server communication: Octane application to Elasticsearch and Elasticsearch to another Elasticsearch service. Recently, we found this is a security gap. The Octane application is interacting with Elasticsearch server, but that was missing from the requirements and prerequisites in the setup. The Micro Focus team has not given advice on how to implement authentication-based communication between Octane to Elasticsearch, and we found it as a gap later, then our security team asked us to fix that gap. So, there was a lot of time spent on rework. They should have helped us with a clear requirement. This requirement has slipped from the initial requirements and drafting during the installation, causing additional rework for us after installation. This means my admin team and I have to work to fix that gap. I already gave this feedback to my customer success manager, "Security related prerequisites and requirements should be thoroughly explained to the client." Hopefully, they can apply this and avoid future rework. For the requirement document, the module should provide multiple templates to be prepared, or customized quickly, and be reusable. For the Pipeline Analysis, job or application grouping has to support Jenkins job grouping, because we have thousands of jobs running. Unfortunately, we are unable to group those by using multiple filters. They could help us with these features in upcoming releases in the next six months. That would be great because many testing and production jobs for Jenkins users need filters and grouping.

I would like to see the mobile testing improved so that we can simply select a mobile device, then specify what parameters we want, and the testing will be run based on that. This feature would be a very good addition.

Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle.

The reporting side of ALM Octane could do with a few areas of improvement. There is not enough flexibility in the way that we can cut up the data to report on certain things. For instance, with test information, we can't split that up by team, so it's quite difficult to see what coverage each team is currently working on. Some tech managers and scrum managers want to see the testing which going on within their team, but it is difficult to see. We only get a more holistic overviews of that. I come from a testing background, and think the testing could be improved.

I work pretty closely with Micro Focus, particularly on ALM Octane. Right now we have a backlog of some 60 or 70 enhancement requests, varying in priority from very high to low. In general, there's a trend in our requests to have the ability to export data, en masse, out of Octane. There are capabilities within Octane to export data, but there are specifics around test suites and requirements and relations, as well as certain attributes, that we would like to be able to export easily out of Octane and into a database or Excel. One of the things that a lot of our project teams have complained about is the simplicity of reporting that's available in Octane, and that they have to export data out of it in order to create the types of reports that their PMO or their client wants to see. Octane provides solutions around OData, and integration into reporting tools, but what people really want is smart and good reporting, advanced reporting, within the tool. They don't want to have to go out to another tool for reporting. In general, we also have some requests to beef up the manual testing abilities and the ability to report on testing progress. All the basics are there, but there's an issue of maintainability. For example, one thing that we brought up to them recently was: Once you plan a test and it creates a run, more particularly a suite run, you can't edit the suite run afterward. It locks you in, and we're saying that that is not realistic with how people work. Mistakes are made and people are humans and we change our minds about things. So the tool needs to allow for a bit more flexibility in that testing area, as well as some better widgets to report on progress.

The problem with Octane is that if I'm in ALM and I need to go into this Agile process, and I have been using Micro Focus ALM, when I go to Micro Focus Octane, all the things that are in ALM are not all working in Octane. For example, the template feature: When I manage projects that are being created in ALM, I have a standard template, but I don't have a template for them in Octane. I literally have to create the project from the ground up every time, which for an administrator, is a nightmare solution. It could take you upwards of two to three days to set up a project, and then you have to try and make sure it has all the same stuff as the previous projects. You literally have to have this massive checklist to make sure you create all the same fields, you put all the links, you put all the dropdowns to make sure all this stuff works for the projects. If I'm jumping from ALM to Agile, I'll go into Octane and create a new project template form, but I have to actually document creating that because I have to create every individual piece of that project - all the pages, all the fields, all the drop downs. I have to duplicate all the work, each time I have to add a new project in Octane. It's very complicated. When I set up new projects, it takes multiple days, and then it's fraught with mistakes, because it's a manual process for setting these things up. I have multiple people trying to do it and I'm going to have all kinds of errors Typically, for ALM, it takes any one of us minutes to create a new project. I can create a new project in about 15 minutes, at the most. And I can guarantee you the project that's created is identical to all the other projects that I have created, because it's a template. In Octane, I literally have to create every field value, every field, every form, every workflow, manually, each time, which always ends up with a problem. I've talked to them about it. They say it's on a list to be looked at. I would think that would need to be at the top of the list. Another issue is that one of the things I do is link all these things together. Octane has a Synchronizer tool. The only problem was, it didn't work with all the fields. They just upgraded it to work with multi-select fields. I haven't had a chance to test it yet. I worked with their engineers on this. I don't know how they could have not done this. There are not that many different field types that you would create. A text string or a single dropdown or a multi dropdown, or a numeric field. They had everything but the multi-select field. All the rest of them worked but multi-select didn't. In my projects, about one-third of my fields are multi-selects. When I tried to get the systems to work using Octane, I couldn't get them to work. I had to use another tool for the projects that needed multi-select. I put those projects in JIRA because JIRA worked.

First, the Requirements Module could be better, to build up a better requirements process. There's a huge improvement from ALM.NET to Octane, but it's still not really facilitating all the needs of the product owners, to set up their requirements in Octane. Second, because JIRA is a leading tool for both development and requirements management - everybody is using JIRA - I'm pretty there will be a use case where people are trying to connect between ALM Octane and JIRA. The back-end configuration of the synchronization with JIRA could be simplified. The architecture is really complicated. We required a lot of machines to build the cluster and the configuration was not really clearly described within the documentation. This may have something to do with the fact that the software is pretty new. I addressed this with the vendor, but a solution was not really provided. However, I saw just today that they are creating a collaboration platform for people who are evaluating ALM Octane. That's a good start to facilitate this but, as I said, because the software is pretty new - it's only two or three years old - I expect that some things are not really completely optimized. I'm pretty sure it's going to be better in the future.

There is a lot of room to implement new things. I would like to have more possibilities for doing test automation directly in Octane or to see UFT scripts within Octane. The implementation within ALM of UFT was much better than in Octane because I can only see the results from our test runs in Octane, but not the test itself. With Gherkins in there, that's fine, but I do not really have a hand on the scripts themselves. I can follow the pipeline jobs in Jenkins, but I can't see what's really happening there. So I would like to have some more information about that in Octane. Also, while there is a Requirements Module in Octane, it is very plain. It's okay to have some requirements described there, but it's not really following the whole BDD approach. I would like to have more features for requirements in there; not as much as in ALM because in ALM it was a mess, it was too much. There is a whole lot of room to improve.

We are the lucky guys as we have a type of "design partnership" with Micro Focus so I do have a call once a week with R&D, discussing problems from a user's perspective and from an operating maintenance perspective. We do have a close collaboration on improving Octane for the needs of the automotive industry. We are contributing a lot of features, thoughts, and ideas, and Micro Focus is very good at implementing many of them and improving their tools. They are getting feedback from a couple of hundred users working in the early phase of transition now: How users are thinking, how they are using or abusing Octane, and what could be improved for the benefit of both companies. An example of one of the features we have requested is inheriting information from a test suite into a suite run and into a menu run, so the user does not have to add that information, update it manually. Other examples of areas in which we're looking for improvement are the UX, how it looks and feels, new widgets which make life easier. There are various things, all over the tool. We're also looking for REST API enhancements because our IT guys are trying to add this and that by REST and it takes a long time and the response is low. Also, the error messages that might pop up if you're doing something by REST, they could be better. Micro Focus is paying attention and working on things actively. I've never seen a design partnership like this between companies. For both sides, it's very intense, it's very interesting, and it's a huge benefit for both sides.

To the credit of Micro Focus, we are very actively working with their product management team and the R&D team as well. When we looked at this tool, inevitably we draw comparisons to, or parallels with, the HP ALM or the legacy ALM tool. From that perspective there are some features that we find are missing, probably for a valid reason: Because it's a next-generation tool, some of the legacy stuff has been removed, and it has a newly designed user-experience. But that being said, there is an opportunity to do a little more with the dashboarding. We still feel that HPE Quality Center/HPE ALM reporting is very powerful. We talked with R&D, and there are some things on their roadmap, but at the same time, their strategy is to connect Octane with visualization tools such as Power BI. Our perspective of the drawbacks or the limitations comes from drawing comparisons with HPE ALM. Some of those limitations are probably by design and for a reason. That being said, the product management and R&D teams are working very closely with us and we are giving them a lot of enhancement requests.

Octane, from an administration perspective, is very limited. The application is improving with each release but what is missing is the ability to manage users and workspaces. I would also like "usable" reporting for more than a few workspaces. Also still missing is the ability to copy a workspace or get data in or out, except for limited REST calls.

Globally, I don't see many major points of improvement. It's mostly plenty of little things, and it's weird to me that they are not in the product yet. They are really details, but they're annoying details. I'm sure all these features will be included in Octane in the following month or year because I talked with their R&D so I know they're working on it. But it's just awkward that some points are not there yet. Let me just give you an example. Today, in the tool, we've got plenty of assets we can handle, like requirements, user storage, defects, tasks and so on. And to all of those elements, we can add comments. We can add comments to any asset in Octane but not to tasks. It's just impossible to understand why it's not available for tasks because it's available everywhere else. Similarly, for attachments, you can attach files absolutely everywhere except for automated runs, which is, again, awkward. I don't understand why for this element, in particular, you cannot do it. It's little touches like that. The Kanban boards are pretty easy to use and easy to configure. The only thing is that you cannot set a specific color for a specific card, depending on the value of the field. It's a really simple feature, very easy to implement because I implemented it in some other tools that I wrote. So I know it's easy to do. It would be really nice to have that, from a user-experience point of view, but we don't have it yet. It's really little touches here and there that are missing.