OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

• The ability to create and store requirements as well as tests, both manual and automated.
• The ability to determine traceability between requirements, tests and defects found in our testing process is a huge advantage in determining the breakdown in the application business model.

Previous to the utilization of Quality Center our requirements were created and stored in Word documents, and all Test Plans were facilitated through Excel, and there was little coordination or consistency to testing standards. Quality Center has allowed us to better track our testing coverage and plan our releases.

I think there are still some changes to help integrate with agile processes better without having to use a separate product. I think that since Quality Center has had functionality added over such a long period of time, that certain modules and other HP tools could be better integrated.

Initially when we started using Quality Center we had some issues with scaling the solution throughout and updating across multiple teams but these issues have since been resolved.

Customer Service:

I would rate the level of customer service very high.

Technical Support:

Its very high, and once you establish the proper channels and key contacts to work with it is pretty seamless.

We did not previously utilize a different solution for managing our requirements and testing efforts.

Our implementation and setup was somewhat complex do to our enterprise architecture. We have multiple divisions across two companies that share the same servers and architecture but have different needs with regards to setting up and managing projects.

Initially we implemented Quality Center ourselves but then went with an outside vendor later due to some complications. Depending on the complexity of your organization I recommend working with an approved vendor or service partner to setup your installation.

We haven’t really calculated ROI on our testing efforts as of yet.

It has a good requirement management process, Test plan and Test Resource Management compare to other tools. It also has SLA Management which helps to decide the status of tests.

HP ALM integrates requirement management process, defect management process and it helps in smooth execution of Load testing process.

HP ALM UI needs some improvement. Sometimes changes are not saved correctly.

I have been using this product for close to 2 years.

None

None

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Customer Service: Fair. It takes at least 2 days for support people to respond to ticket.Technical Support: Fair. It takes at least 2 days for support people to respond to ticket.

No. We have other HP Products like LoadRunner, Quality Center etc. So we wanted to have ALM which integrates seamlessly with these products.

Setup was straightforward.

Set up was implemented through a vendor team and the vendor team was very knowledgeable and helpful.

Having HP ALM has helped in streamlining the Performance testing projects and now management has a better view of the projects and their status. It also helped us in streamlining the work across various groups.

The infrastructure set up cost which included the server’s hardware, Agent Servers.

It's a good product and definitely can be considered in cases of large enterprise projects.

We use it for manual and automatic testing along with defect and requirements management. We can check everything, know who is the sponsor for it, and make a test plan. Everything is very visible. 

ALM uses a waterfall approach. We have some hybrid approaches in the company and need a more agile approach. We have also installed ALM Octane and are trying to see if it fills the approach that we are looking for our company.

One to three years.

It is very stable. We have not had any problems. 

I have a good impression of the scalability. I have been very satisfied. 

I used tech support once. It took a while to solve the issue, but it was solved.

Before, we used Excel for complex testings. Using this solution has been a huge step for us. From reporting to team management, everything is better now. 

We have divided our licenses between Micro Focus ALM and ALM Octane. It works for us. 

I am the QA Manager, so we use it to score all our test cases, results, defects, and reporting, which is very important. We're able to produce a number of reports and graphs. This helps us a lot when working with our clients.

We're doing a lot of agile work and using a number of different agile tools. Agile integration, as right now it does integrate with version 1.0, but I'm not sure about its integration with some of the other agile tools.

We've been using it for about five years.

It is stable. We've really had no downtime experiences. We've had good experiences with it.

It is scalable. We're actually moving onto the SaaS product. We're looking at that right now.

Tech support has been very helpful when we've had some questions or issues. They've been very responsive.

I'll find out over the next couple of months as we are looking to do the first upgrade since I have been using it.

It's a very good tool. We use it throughout the company. There are just some integration points which could be a little better. But if they're out there, I don't know about them. Maybe having the knowledge and knowing about them would help as well.

The most useful are the requirements repository, the ability to link requirements to test script steps, and the use of traceability matrix reporting.

Houses requirements and testing with approvals all in one place. Signature approval capability was very useful.

It could be better by incorporating more spell checking and word processing functionalities in steps. Also, it could be more user friendly to "call" other scripts.

I have used the latest version of ALM for about four years, but I have used all previous versions going back to 2001 through to today.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Mostly with the blocking of users when the license limit was reached.

Customer Service:

It's 5/10 as our own resources were more useful at solving issues.

Technical Support:

It's 5/10 - our own resources were more useful at solving issues due to time constraints with responses.

We did not have a previous solution. This was our first solution.

Make sure it is easy to use for your roles. If you have technical people, other solutions may be better (like resources with VB expertise, etc.). Make sure you implement it as organized by system functionality, not by project.

My current company is just starting to use it, and they keep copying test plans for each project instead of reusing original test plans, which is a waste of time and resources.

• End to End traceability (requirements- test cases- defects)
• Analytics (reporting, charts, dashboards, etc.)
• Ease of defect management
• Ease of email alerts, etc.

In my last organization we identified HP ALM as our strategic test management tool to standardize tool usage across the organization. Different business teams were using different tools like Bugzilla etc. but with the procurement of HP ALM everything was, eventually, standardized. By means of ALM we were able to deploy some testing standards and processes. Personally, I found ALM very handy for test managers and project managers as an entire project test life-cycle can be managed in one place and leadership get end-end visibility. I also like the reporting function in ALM, very useful.

Overall the user experience of HP ALM is very good, there are some small improvements which can help those who are doing defect triage and management, and also the actual testers who use a test lab. For instance, when I open the defect list using a report or dashboard drill down, I can’t update individual defect without actually opening it. However if I select a defect shortlisting criteria and get a list of matching defects from defect module (defect list view) I can very well update defect log without actually having to open the defect. This seems like a small thing but believe me, when you are dealing with multiple defects and have limited time on a defect triage call, this small functionality really makes your life easy. There a such few small enhancements which HP can probably do to make this wonderful tool even better.

I've used it for two years and three months.

Yes, some minor issues but these were not tool issues but more to do with lack of testing after deployment.

No, ALM is pretty stable.

Only once but that was because we reached the maximum floating license capacity at a particular time due to many testers from multiple projects logged in at the same time.

I have never had direct interaction with customer service.

I did not personally, but in my previous organization Bugzilla was used. ALM replaced it because it was a complete package, and also the company had bought other HP testing tools like UFT & PC to meet end to end testing needs.

I wasn’t the admin for ALM so can’t really comment, but from an user standpoint I found it pretty simple.

We had an in-house admin team.

I don’t know the ROI in monetary terms, but certainly ALM helped me get more people to follow testing standards and practices.

In my current company we have multiple tools. I am currently exploring various options to standardize the tool set up. Some of these tools are JIRA, and Bugtracker, etc.

If you want AN end to end testing lifecycle product, I think HP is the winner. It has test management (ALM), Automation (UFT) and Performance (PC) testing, and it all is in the bundled package from HP, so all end to end testing needs are managed. From a pure test management standpoint, ALM also stands tall as it provides a very good solution to manage requirements, test cases, defects, traceability and reports, and not just bug management.