OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is preparing test cases, and we deploy the solution via desktop.

The independent view of elevated access is good. In addition, the elevated instructions being sent to our SQL is valuable.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the response from customer service and support could be improved.

We have been using this solution for fifteen years. We are currently using version 12 but intend to migrate to version 16.

I rate the scalability of the solution ten out of ten. There are currently over 100 users using this solution in our organization.

We have had a poor experience with customer service and support, and sometimes, we do not get responses from them.

We have previously used JIRA, but ALM was a better solution for us.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment is done in-house.

I cannot comment on licensing as another department handles it.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have been involved in a lot of IT projects which need test management and for the test execution process, we are using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

We are able to use Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for test management, defect management, test process, test governance activities, and requirement management. We are able to achieve all of this, the solution is very useful.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center could improve how the automation process works. Addiotnlally, the parallel execution needs to be optimized. For example, if multiple users, which are two or more users, are doing an execution, while we execute the cases, I have seen some issues in the progress.

Most enterprise solutions are moving into the cloud and this solution could work on its cloud compatibility. For example, if I have an Amazon or a Google cloud, I would like to know how would it best fit into their cloud environment.

I have been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for approximately eight years.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a stable solution.

I have found Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to be scalable.

The technical support from Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is good, they are responsive.

I rate the technical support from Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a four out of five.

The initial setup is straightforward, it was not any more difficult than other setups.

The enterprise pricing and licensing are reasonable.

I would recommend Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to others.

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

It provides a central repository for all our testing artifacts and documentation. We use it not only to keep everything centrally housed, but it is also great for answering audits. That is our biggest use of this product.

Centralization of our testing artifacts is probably the biggest benefit. We have a disjointed arena with a lot of different legacy applications and new applications that are being built. We need a central house to store all our procedures, documents etc. and ALM is the tool for doing all that.

It provides a streamlined and consistent approach. One that is repeatable. In today's fast paced IT world, these things are definitely necessary.

We're starting to move more into a microservices enablement world. Using other products and being able to integrate with Docker etc. is going to be key for us. That's one of the reasons why I attended this conference, is to learn a little bit more about how HPE can help us with the integration of those tools.

We have had no stability issues. It is very reliable.

It's handling everything we've asked it to do so I don't have any issues with scalability. It could probably do 10 times more than what it's doing for us.

Other than professional services, we haven't used any technical support.

Initially, we were using other products but HPE acquired a couple of those companies. Now with the recent movement towards pushing their software out to Micro Focus that may change a little bit of the relationship we have with HPE. That's another reason why I attended the conference, is to understand a bit more about how that relationship will evolve.

It was initially setup within my organization but I didn't really have any hands-on involvement with it. Our direct teams were involved in this process. Based on the staff that we have today, it was very straightforward and very easy to do. Then again, we've got people who had experience with the tool so they've done it before.

HPE has a great suite or had a great suite in their software department and everything integrates very well. For those who are looking at HPE or now Micro Focus in terms of their software, I would advise them to consider interoperability of all the capabilities. That is the key for speed and implementation as opposed to feature functions. One of the things that we've found with the HPE suite is that the interoperability is hands-down second to none.

It's 100% reliable to us. It provides us everything we need. It's scalable, flexible, centralized and also integrates well. What more could you ask for?

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are partnership, value, capability and flexibility. We've partnered up with HPE for years and we enjoy all those different aspects with them.

I would say the most valuable is that we can get people started off really quickly on solutions because we've been partners with HPE for a long time and it helps us tailor the product to ours needs. When we have issues with something we can get support directly from HPE since we paid for it.

The fact that it works with a vast number of technologies works for us because our internal customers use the tool for testing a lot of different applications. That's probably the best feature that it has for us.

There's a lot of centralized testing from some perspectives and our main goal is to provide for a bunch of different groups at a lower cost so we centralize licensing and distribute it to various people. The biggest benefit of that is that it allows us to empower the people that need the solutions instead of manually having them develop the solutions on their own.

We've seen a lot of new things in Octane and other things that we have wished for. One of the hardest things that we're noticing is it might be hard to migrate from ALM to Octane, which has the features we need. What we really like is the ability to track different types of tests to our requirement. If you want to play with Selenium Test or LeanFT, UFT tests or any other framework you can think of. Being able to capture those results in a common area is the biggest thing we would be looking for because we have so many different groups that some of them have their own solutions for testing but ALM is sort of the central repository for our results so that would be a huge benefit for us.

In the past three years it's become a lot more stable. Prior to that, we saw a lot of issues with stability and a lot of patching and concern from our internal customers that they couldn't rely on the tool to always be there when they needed it. We spent a ton of time upgrading to the latest version so we don't have as much experience with the stability of it yet.

ALM has really scaled out for us. We have hundreds of projects in ALM and it's always done well with that.

A+

Our biggest issue was in the switch over from HP Inc. to HPE. I think we had some trouble getting in touch with higher level support so we spent a lot of time going through basic support where the people that work with the tools have a lot of experience with the tools. We think that it would be better if we could bypass the lowest levels of support on some issues. I can understand the process that we usually have to go through but more recently our reps have been helpful in getting us to the people that we need quicker so we can get a resolution.

We don't have time to develop a lot of reporting and our customers want a lot of reporting. It's hard to have the expertise to write the scripts in the version that we have now. That's a major pain point for us, something that's missing. Another thing is we always hear about it performance. We have a huge load balance environment to try to speed up the performance but there's always some things that are slow in ALM. Just basic navigations are running automated tests is a big thing we hear. People want to run the tests as past as possible but they feel like they're limited by ALM sometimes.

We have a pretty strong emphasis on quality, so ALM is our gold source repository for quality. That's where we store everything, from requirements, test cases, defects, and all of the artifacts around certifying that quality is evident in every release, in every STLC product we produce.

The UI is terrible in the sense that we actually use automation scripts to avoid being in the UI, which is just fascinating, and then the data model.

I would say it's stable in the fact that it's up and it works. We have challenges with the data architecture. We're excited about Octane. It has some interesting capabilities, but it's our standard. We're used to using it, so I guess it's the things you want to enhance in it, we're just working through that process from that standpoint, but relatively it works.

We're already at enterprise scale, so it's used across the enterprise. I would say that we're at that point.

We invest very heavily on having strong domain and subject matter expertise, so we use support less. One of the things I would love to have is a pay-per-ticket model or a pay-per-patch model. I think that when we call support, it's either a defect or enhancement. It's not just, "Hey, I need customer support," because we're not novice users. We're on the high end of maturity so we're pushing the products in the spaces that I have very much through limits and it's really getting on their solutions and enhancements team.

From that standpoint we get good interaction. There's a really long cycle time though. That's my only disappointing thing around the support is that tickets tend to age, because they're enhancements. Enhancements have a longer cycle, you have to develop it, get it in a backlog, etc.

I have an entire team, so I'm a director and I have an entire tools team that does that. I did get involved in the planning and the strategy of how we're going to do it. My team said that first installation is relatively easy. When we go to upgrade and migrate, that's where there's pain.

Almost every customer will say the upgrades and migrations are very painful. They could be way easier. A lot of it has to do with having to upgrade the data, the in-place database or stand up in entirety, it's just cumbersome. It's very cumbersome and it takes a long time, longer than it probably should. That's a pain point that I think everyone has. Fortunately in our case, we've never had to call professional services to do it. I have a lot of customers say they couldn't get through the upgrade without it. Now, on the support side, it was really helpful, they were on the phone our first major migration for 72 hours.

It was great to literally be in that, "Hey, we're going through it," they were there the whole time, which was really awesome. We didn't have to involve professional services, but that was a good story to say, "Hey, they're on the phone with us. They're grinding it." So the whole 72-hour period we had someone from support cycle in. They did the hand-offs and all that stuff while our team was grinding off. So that was a good story there.

I think it's a great platform. It does a lot for us, but the fact that our users don't want to be in the application is weird. They'd rather work in a spreadsheet and then upload their results to the actual server. Now it could just be their behaviour pattern, but I think if it was a little easier for them to kind of work in, they would have an easier time with it.

Although on the plus side, the fact that it's open like that and you can just connect, maybe that's a positive too. So it's kind of a plus/minus. The UI they said, "Hey, I don't really like UI," but the fact that you can just upload your stuff from your work space, which could be a spreadsheet, it could be Eclipse, it could be a script that you're working in and it just directly uploads, they love that.

When you talk about easy use from an integration standpoint, definitely high marks there, but the UI is just something they really do not like. I personally, as the person who has to get all the data and metrics out of it, the data model is horrible. It's a constant complaint that I have. The new Octane platform kind of solves that. I just wish they had put some of that into ALM because the product marketing strategy is you have to have both.

Have a well-defined process, have a strong reporting structure, meaning in your process you want a lot of measurability. If you define your output, the reports and the questions you need to answer from what you're doing, which your process should be managing for you. In our company, we are very specific about what our executives and stakeholders want.

We have a very well-defined set of measurements that we have to take. We then put a process designed to ensure those measurements are always taken. That then allows you to deal with your outputs and your reporting structure, which then allows you to properly architect your tooling. The technology is very flexible. You have to decide as a client area how you really want to use it and that's going to start with what your business needs are the values that you're trying to get out of it.

That's the biggest advice that I have, it's not even on the technology. The technology will do great things for you if you have a plan and a structure and you know what you want it to do for you. Half the time they don't know, they want the tool to do it for them and it's the other way around. So that's what I advise people to do.

Think about it, have a vision, have a plan, tie that to outcomes, and measure those outcomes. If you're answering the right questions and asking the right questions, your technology will really enable you. You've got to look at it from that standpoint.

First of all, the product works. ALM is traditionally more of a waterfall application, but it does allow you to collect your requirements, your test cases, and you can even execute test cases automatically from ALM, which is great. Everyone's trying to do DevOps these days or Agile, so it's a good product.

It allows us to do things more efficiently. There's nothing like spending millions of dollars upgrading an application, and trying to manage your requirements, your test cases, your defects in a spreadsheet. Who has access to that? That's what that product gives you.

We need to move to Agile or DevOps. We have other products that do that, but I'm trying to standardize on a platform. I'm very interested in HP Agile Manager.

We've had no issues with the stability.

It's real easy to scale and add more licenses.

Not directly through HPE. We go through HPE's vendor partner, which is Checkpoint Technologies, and they provide excellent technical support.

When I took over Quality Assurance, we had Quality Center. ALM is the new Quality Center, and we upgraded to version 12 of ALM. 550 projects with no problems.

I came in and decided that we needed to upgrade to v12. We reached out to our vendor partner, Checkpoint Technologies, and they came in, assessed what it would take to upgrade it, and they did the upgrade for us.

It doesn't do Agile very well. We can make it do it, but it wasn't designed to do it either. That's not being fair to the product. It's a waterfall-based product. You should go straight to HPE Agile Manager.

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.

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.