OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

HP ALM helps us consolidate our efforts. All of our projects are in there. We are also in the life science domain so we have many more compliance requirements which we have to adhere to. It's pretty good so far.

As a user we see one version of the requirements for the application, we keep all our assets together, it gives us a huge traceable. It's all the classic benefits of using an application lifecycle management tool that are available.

We look at service packs, what bugs they have and fixes. From a end-user perspective when you have invested heavily in these tools for the last four, five, six years or more, organizations are there from when it was Mercury. We just want to keep pace with where the industry is going, where the shift is in terms of quality assurance and requirement management. HP is very strong on the testing side, but in the last few years with the agile methodology it has lagged behind. It's slowly catching up and eventually it will get there, but we love the eco-system we're in and will continue to move forward.

It's stable

It's very scalable, a very robust kind of solution and we recommend it to anyone who's looking for application lifecycle kind of tool.

We use an HPE partner for our support needs, but tickets do go to HPE eventually, level two, level three. We have never had an issue.

Our organization is very new in this area. We are a pretty young company. We didn't have any formal task-management kind of tool or testing tool per se. When we were looking at the solution one of our implementation partners for one of the projects recommended it and we looked at it and it's capability. Many of the folks who are on the team have used it in other companies. For the current organization it was a no-brainer not to pick this tool.

It's very straightforward.

Since we are in a regulated industry we have to use the workflow we use, what was built for this. For us it was a straight-forward choice. For large and small companies there are a lot of choices for task-management tools. IBM rational tools are there and then there's JIRA, there's also TFS. There are a lot of task-management tools. They can pick any one that they want to.

There are several features of ALM I found to be extremely valuable.

This question should actually be divided up. Several companies receive a different value add from different components of ALM. Some use it only for managing tests and defects and leave out requirements.

But just for sake of overall added value to me, the Test Planning and Lab portions are extremely valuable especially pertaining to a BPT license. Creating your core BPT components and mapping corner and edge test cases from that makes it easy to create regression test beds as well as facilitate Agile development. Also, if you are talking automation, the BPT component is critical in helping with the BPT test driven framework. Of course, the Defect module along with the Test Runners are key for execution and defect reporting. I love the ability to customize different attributes to defects in order to facilitate a specific release type.

ALM has driven some of the projects in my past organizations.

• It has established a sense of accountability with its traceability mechanisms that are unparalleled from a single system.
• It has allowed multiple stakeholders of a project to deliver fast, all simultaneously in an ALM system without having disparate sources of information.
• The automation has been a pride and joy as far as mapping requirements to BPT cases to automation.

• License costs are still staggeringly high.
• Implementation is a bit tedious as far as backend installation and configuration. Perhaps with 12.x it has become easier but there need to be more troubleshooting "tools" in order to do upgrades and better insightful dialog/windows/prompts for new installs. If I compare the feature set of the Requirements module to COTS tools such as Jama, it has room to improve in many areas.
• Also, with tools this large, the integration to automation can be bloated. There need to be a long term, sustainable solution to run much leaner.

We've mainly been using the product for service requests and for migrating code and scripts for Oracle events.

The solution's value is its ease of integration with the Oracle e-Business Suite.

It's not a very user-friendly product. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is reasonably scalable.

Compared to other solutions, licensing costs are in the mid-range. 

We also evaluated Jira and we've recently decided to move to that solution. 

It's important to check that the product is compatible with your use case. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We provide support for customers, which require this kind of solution.

The setup is pretty straightforward.

The solution can scale.

I frankly don't recommend Micro Focus solutions. 

The support is not good and the documentation is not consistent. I even opened the issue to the partner. With the support not being great, we faced some stressful situations with the customer. That's why I'm looking for another partner.

I'd like to see more artificial intelligence and machine learning features implemented in future releases.

I've been using the solution for almost a year.

I realized there are some bugs in the solution that were not occurring on the last solution. 

Micro Focus bought another company. Since then, my experience hasn't been that great. The quality has dropped. It's not as stable as it used to be. I was expecting it to be more stable.

For the Quality Center, the scalability is quite good. On Load Runner, as a comparison, I faced one issue related to scalability. We face quite a few problems in that area.

The companies that are using Quality Center are quite sizeable. We have around 20 users on that particular solution.

The technical support is not helpful. They aren't responsive or knowledgable and they don't take initiative to solve issues for clients. It can hurt the relationship we have with our clients. We're not satisfied with their level of service.

While the setup is straightforward in general, the configuration is not quite as user-friendly. To configure the solution, you need to have many years of experience with the solution. Those that are new to it may face issues.

In terms of deployment, it takes about three days for the Quality Center installation as a whole. In contrast, Load Runner takes about two days in our case. 

We're a Micro Focus partner.

I'm not sure of which version of the solution we're using. We are configuring the company and we tend to use the latest version of labels.

We work with both cloud and on-premises deployment models.

I don't recommend Micro Focus tools. It's a very strong company nowadays, however, I'm trying to find another partner. For instance, I've researched solutions that are much better than Micro-Focus in SAP scenarios.

I'd advise users looking for a solution to pay attention to their requirements and make sure whichever solution they choose meets them. You'll need to do a lot of research and balance the pros and cons of each option before choosing anything.

Overall, I would rate the solution six out of ten.

• Test management
• Defect management, and 
• Test case storage.

Good test management tool.

Defect tracking.

Licensing model is awful.

We mostly use the Defect module and then Test Plan, Test Lab. But if you ask about the most valuable feature it is the customization of any action in the ALM client. We can customize any action, window, or workflow of not only the Defect workflow but also any other entity. There is no other tool that can do it in such a way.

The testing methodology we use means we do not need any other tool for requirements, testing and so on.

• Dashboard complexity
• Quick generation (for many entities the reports are very slow)
• Test Lab is very complex, it should be simpler

We used it for more than 10 years (from version 8 as Test Director from Mercury).

The clients, of course, are not stable, but it is acceptable.

Scalability is not a problem at this time because the hardware is better than the software needs.

Technical support is good.

Yes, we used Rational ClearQuest. It was very customizable too but it was old and tough and we need a better and more elegant solution.

Initial setup is very simple, but the upgrade on Linux is impossible so we moved to Windows.

Pricing is very big, so it's good is to negotiate with its vendors. The solution is not so important and should not cost so much.

Yes, we evaluated three other options but it was about 10 years ago and it is not relevant now to specify them here. The other options also have very good solutions.

Do the simple implementation, do not customize it because you will have more problems.

The most valuable user feature that we use right now is the camera. It allows us to take the test evidence, and it makes it easier for the user, especially the business user, to capture evidence as they test.

For a test management department, and we are highly audited, by the way, it allows us to have a single repository for all our projects where we do tests, as one go-to place for our test evidence. It has a go-to place for us to generate reporting, retain results, and be able to share it.

I have to say I'm not a huge fan of ALM. I think it's the best out of some of the not-so wonderful tools out there. The example that I usually give people is, if you're an IT person and you use a tool, you know that right click always does similar things. You know that there's functions that from one application to another mean the same thing or has the same features and functionalities. ALM doesn't work that way. I don't think it's a difficult tool to use, but it does need someone to be first trained on it, and then you have to use it a few times before it kind of sticks.

If you use it once, but then you go away and you come back, let's say a few months later, you have to get a refresher course. So it's like a computer application, there are certain functions which are: F1 is Help. Control is something else, and so on.

It's not intuitive in that way, which has always been a problem, especially with business users.

We have had a few unplanned downtimes. There's been situations where we're not able to access the tools.

Scalability, again going back, we're limited by the number of licenses that we have. If we want to have more projects, from our understanding, we just have to purchase additional licenses or purchase additional access for projects.

We have definitely used tech support, and the skill level varies (this is before the Micro Focus integration). When we were trying to figure if QC SaaS can work with Windows 10, it took us three weeks before tech support finally realized that they missed a patch on their end, and it cost us three weeks of wasted time. The IT support even said, "We're waiting for you guys to get synced up on your side," before we could do anything.

Tech support has the knowledge and skill, but it's not consistent.

I previously had used QC at a different company. I know I need a test management tool. When I joined the company, we already had this one, but I wanted to move to SaaS, because I needed something that was not on-premise based.

I was involved in moving us from the client to the SaaS and it was painful. We were on QC 10, and we had to move to QC SaaS. Because we're a bank, we have a ridiculous amount of firewalls.

So, we could not install QC SaaS and our tech support team didn't understand how to get it installed. Therefore, one of my team members had to figure out all of the nuts and bolts, then the HPE tech support was also slow in helping us. It actually took us many months to finally go from QC 10 to QC SaaS. I'm actually close to the end of my three-year license, and I'm seriously like, "Do I stay? Do I move?"

I did look at other solutions, and I didn't accept those only because the camera feature was very important to us. The other solutions that I looked at really didn't have the camera feature yet.

It was Zephyr, SmartBear, and ALM. I have some business users who are also very conservative, and for me to move them away from something they're very familiar with, I have to have some very compelling additions and functionalities to give them in order to say it was worth the effort to retrain them on something else.

I had a demo recently that was actually for Octane, but in that demo, I found out about a couple of tools that I actually have access to now that I didn't know about before. One of them was a JIRA integration and the other was a way to create manual task steps, actually just stepping through the application, which could be automated.

I was like, "Wait, I'm near the end of my three-year license, and I'm just now about this?" I was like, "I could have been using this?"

So, those are the new tools I'm looking at, and it actually came up because, as I said, we're renewing our license, and when my rep was talking to me to find out what was my interest, part of it is, "Well, I need your integration." He's like, "Oh, we think we have that." I was like, "Really?"

For anyone looking at this product, I would definitely have them look at other tools, too, and make some comparisons. I would say to them, "Hey, here's how we had to deal with it, and here's what works for us and what doesn't." For the other tools, since we don't have firsthand experience, I could only suggest that they actually do some research.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: response and customer service. Support is very important. Then obviously, still getting a good value for what I'm spending. The product at least needs to be comparable to the other tools that are available on the market.

I have to say that I definitely was looking to move away from HPE initially when I took over the department, because we were getting no support from HPE at all. However, HPE, because we're small in comparison to their other customers, shunted us off to a third party, their reseller, which may ultimately have been a good thing for HPE (now Micro Focus) as well as for us, because we finally got some attention.

From a testing perspective, creating our test cases, executing test cases and then raising defects, it gives us good visibility back to our functional requirements.

It’s one product that allows us to do everything from a system test perspective.

We’ve seen a couple demos for Octane and Agile Manager. I think the direction it’s going will deliver what we want. At this time, it delivers what we need, but the direction that Octane is going is what I would like to go towards.

We’ve had the product online for about 7 years.

We have not really had any problems with it. It delivers everything that we need.

The way things are going, it’s going in the direction that we would want; with ALM, Octane, and all the types of products that we want.

I don’t use technical support personally. We have another guy that we report issues to and he looks after those.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

From a testing perspective, it is a great product for system test and delivers everything that you need. It gives you the complete package and full visibility from your requirements to creating tests, test execution and defect tracking. Definitely a great tool.

When looking at vendors, we look for reliability, trust. If you do have an issue, you want to know that somebody is going to take an interest in it.