OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

I used the solution to manage the tests that I would plan and record, and I would manage the flow of defects.

I work for a bank company that has a license to use this solution. I am using the solution through the internal internet, not on the cloud. I am using version 12.

It's user friendly, scalable, and very stable and strong. It's cooperative, meaning that I can assess the test to check it and follow the flow of defects, and the developers and the business can use this tool to follow the test process.

We are waiting to migrate from ALM to Octane. It's the same family of softwares, but ALM is designed for cascade systems. The new version of ALM called Octane is for Agile projects. There is more integration with Agile tools like JIRA and other things. I think that will be an improvement of ALM.

The integration could be improved because with Agile technology you are working more quickly than with a top-down methodology.

I have been using this solution for eight years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable. There are 1,000 users in my company.

I used to go to the site and look for questions and solutions on the forum, but I have never asked for support from Micro Focus.

The setup was completed by another team. I am only a user, and I don't control this part of the installation.

Deployment depends on the size of the project. Usually in Agile, you have three weeks of deployment. It does not depend on ALM because it's very easy to start using and deploy the test and the execution test, then follow up.

There is a team of at least four people for maintenance of the solution.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

If you are looking in the market to compare this solution with other tools that are maybe less expensive, I think that the ALM is more expensive than the others. I think that ALM is the best in class, depending on the size of your project. I recommend ALM for big companies with 1,000 to 3,000 users. Medium and small companies can use other, less expensive tools.

It is a test management tool where you write the test plan, test scripts, and test cases. You can log the defects that you found during the testing. You can also use it with other integrations, such as automation using UFT, where you execute the scripts from Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. We are using the latest version of this solution.

You can maintain your test cases and requirements. You can also log the defects in it and make the traceability metrics out of it. There are all sorts of things you can do in this.

It is not that complex to use. In terms of user experience, it is very simple to adopt. It is a good product.

The Agile methodology is now being used across all the organizations, but in this solution, we don't have a dashboard like Jira. In Jira, you can move your product backlogs from one space to another and see the progress, that is, whether a backlog is in the development stage or testing stage. Micro Focus ALM Quality Center does not have this feature. It is typically very straightforward. You just execute the test cases from it, and you just make them pass, fail, or whatever. They can also improve its integration with Jira.

The browser support needs to be improved in this because it supports only Internet Explorer as of now. It does not have support for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or any other browser. 

There are also some performance issues in it. Let's say that you are doing the testing, and you found something and are logging the defect. When you try to attach several or multiple screenshots with the defect, it slows down, which is a very common problem people face.

I would like them to include a functionality where I am able to see the reports across all the projects. When you have multiple projects, being a manager, I would like to see the reports across all the projects. Currently, there is no single sign-on through which we can get all the information at one place. You need to log into it project-wise. If you have ten projects, you can't view the information in one dashboard.

I have been using this solution for more than 12 years.

It is a very stable product. It is a very old product.

Whenever I face any issue or require an item for automation, such as for integrating Excel support, I can get it in the resource library. It has a resource library where you can get all of the stuff.

I don't have any direct contact with Micro Focus support. For any issues that I face while using the product, we have a ticketing system in my company. I just need to log the ticket, and the right person will resolve it. They might be contacting Micro Focus.

The initial setup is pretty simple.

I would highly recommend this product because it is a very stable product. Around 70% to 80% of organizations are using this product. It is a very stable and popular product.

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

It's a centralized test management solution. The fact that you have a place where you can go and find all the stuff that you need to find, and keep track of all of the results long term. That is extremely valuable.

In terms of functionality, it really provides all of the stuff that you need for managing test cases and test execution and keeping track of all of these different items. Now, in terms of keeping up with the trends, there's obviously a lot of challenges.

The new offering, Octane, has all of the essential features that we need in order to move forward to the next mode of operation. I tried to use it and, unfortunately, we had all sorts of trouble down to some limitations as to what kind of URL you can use. That was a pretty sad issue that we ran into. Had that not been the case, I would right now be planning to move on to Octane.

The key pieces of functionality are in place. The reason why I wouldn't rate it higher than seven out of 10 is because you're still using really obsolete technology like ActiveX. You have to physically install the product on your desktop. That's a big no-no. Other than that, it is not far away from being much better than what it is.

17 years.

It is very stable. It has some issues here and there but not significant.

We have struggled to grow with the tool, because the original model was to have just a handful of ALM projects, whereas, we have more than 150 projects. Whenever you pass some threshold, it becomes a challenge.

Even upgrading, it's a massive effort. I'd say at least a six month effort for us just to upgrade it.

The tech support is not so great so far. At least as far as the HPE tech support is concerned. Before, when it was Mercury, it was the best tech support of all time. Right now it's okay. It's doable. It could be better though.

When looking at a company to work with, it's as simple as knowing that the products are mature. We know that if there are going to be issues, we're going to be able to find solutions or some work around for them. It's as simple as that. There's a lot of competition out there. Especially in the open source space, but for you to get support on open source, that's probably a whole different ball game.

We use ALM with our QA Department and it provides a way for us to show our work as a repository for our test-cases. We're able to show what we do on a daily basis. It's very easy to use and it's worked well for us.

Over the past year, we've been able to decrease our defect reduction by executing and making sure we have test-base coverage in all the areas. I don't quite know the percentage exactly. We've been able to reduce the defects.

We've done our source code in another application for so long, to have developers come over to help QA integrate it would probably be an impossible effort.

It's been okay. I think the problem with us is, it can be used for the entire SDLC process, as far as requirements, development and that type of thing, but we only use it for QA.

What happens is, we're having to use multiple products to come to one goal. That's kind of frustrating for the teams. I think if we could get to the point where we could use it as one solution, it would be so much more beneficial.

We haven't scaled it yet, but we're looking to do that. We're working with a company now to look at some different solutions, or at least the ART tool. It's looks very impressive to us. We're in conversations about the ART tool, because we really need something like that for our analysts.

It's an educational tool, so you are able to link your education and link it with Rally. If you have a module that you want to teach, you can just teach them through that. It's a direct connection to HP ALM.

I've never used tech support. We have an individual that works closely with HP. Any technical issues that comes across the team, he tends to work directly with HP to handle those.

We use ALM for all of our applications and didn't use anything before. We're a maturing software company, so we're really getting into these distinct processes, like ALM. We're currently going through a transformation into Agile, so we're really just ramping up to get to that mature stage as a software company.

I was there, but I wasn't involved. I was an independent contributor.

I wouldn't rate it a 10 because it doesn't have the ability to do all the things the developers use today, like TFS. Overall I would recommend it, because of its ease of use. It doesn't take much to get up to date on it and to learn the process of using it for your test-case execution in ALM.

You don't have much time to spend on education. You don't have two weeks for them to learn an application. So, because it's easy to use, I would definitely recommend it for that reason.

With HP ALM, I think it's the fact that it's self-contained application so we can do everything inside the application. We only need to use this one tool.

The availability and the fact that HPE people want to help is something that I appreciate because they are with us, they try to help, they try to understand what we need and they act accordingly.

I think it sells because it's HP ALM. It's because it's a collaboration tool. It helps everybody collaborate within a project and because of that I think we save time and we have less difficulty making sure that everybody is aligned.

The tech support is sometimes not clear when you speak to them.

We had some issue before but now its been fixed. It's because we migrated from an old version and we went to a new one. That created a couple of issues but now it's solved. We need to go to another version so it will be another challenge, but we're working with HPE to understand the best way to do it.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

It's good but we need to manage exactly what we need from them. Sometimes on the business side it's not clear enough. When it's not clear we don't have the results we need. The next time we need to make sure to correctly define our needs and involve them in that way.

We didn't use any other solution previously.

It's not straightforward because for us it was because it was an upgrade of the infrastructure as well. So at the same time we changed the server, we also changed the infrastructure. It was not because of the product itself, it was more linked to what we needed to do at that time.

For us, the most valuable features are the task management function and the requirements gallery that's true to test execution. It's a good mapping tool and a good sensor repository for all prior testing. We can keep all that data in one centralized place.

I think the best improvement it's made to our organization is that because it's so stable, we haven't needed to change. We're able to continue with our business because it's a solution that stands still.

Sometimes there are small customizations that we'd like that are not always available. If I need to contact technical support about an small issues, sometimes it takes some time before I can get resolution. And if there's a feature that's not available, we need to wait for another release because we can't just simply add the feature we need.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It has enterprise-grade stability. We never have any issues with it.

It's definitely scalable.

Absolutely fine. We have contacts where if you just send them an e-mail they will ring you in 15 minutes. It's been a good relationship with the guys. Really helpful.

It's very straightforward and the pre-sales guys are really good.

They come in and set it up.

The most valuable features are ALM's flexibility and performance. We're also able to customize it to do what we want it to do.

Using it properly is our biggest challenge, as some people use it on the most basic level and others rely on other tools.

I think the biggest challenge with ALM is getting useful data in one place. They're scattered in different parts of the solution right now.

It should also allow us to get quicker access to data from the things we're working on.

The overall usability of it could be improved as some things are a bit slow to get used to.

It has deployed just fine for us without issues.

It's close to being perfectly stable. We have no problem with instability.

It has scaled easily for us and our needs.

Customer service is generally pretty good.

Technical support has been pretty good so far. They tend to be fairly quick to respond to us.

We're using JIRA alongside ALM, but there wasn't a prior solution to ALM.

Setting it up is not too difficult.

We implemented it ourselves.

We constantly keep an eye on competitors, but there's not been anything that we've considered moving to.

• Ability to link a test case to a defect which increases traceability
• Ability to log a defect and link similar defects to that one defect. Great for not logging repetitive defects
• The content of the test case parameters (Actual, Expected Results etc) are pulled on the defect which nullifies retyping
• Ability to manage more than one project site at a go
• Reporting structure can be done using a self generated graph. Makes reports look professional even if the user is not completely clued up on ways to report.

1. When I started testing we used to test from SharePoint. This was good for the time being but it lacked a lot in terms of design and the priority of defects was not up to standard. There was no sight of show-stoppers and nobody would know of them unless it is communicated with the relevant people. As opposed to Quality Center where it is highlighted in a form of “level of severity” by putting a scale of low, medium and high
2. In Quality Center one is able to attach a screen print as proof of testing.

• GUI colours not that great
• On the defect site, when one adds a comment, anybody who has access to the same defect can change the initial comment. It would be great if the defect comments would not be editable.

I've never done a deployment.

Our organisation did not have any issues with the stability of this tool.

We were able to have a lot of users logged in at the same time with no lag time or any scalability related issues.

You should invest in Quality Center if you are looking for the following :

• High visibility of project progress
• If you cannot afford automation. or are not completely convinced but want to speed up their testing efforts, you can look into getting a Quality Center/ALM plug-in called Sprinter. A very good testing tool that is worth trying out.
• If you want a quick and smooth transition from manual testing into automation. Its smooth because HP holds your hand until your team is able to execute QTP independently. They are also available to see you through any technically difficulties.