OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

We use ALM to record our testing results. Our company uses SAP, and during implementation, we perform implementation testing and utilize ALM to record the results.

It is a good tool for managing testing. We can easily download the data and manage profiles.

It is beneficial for managing testing data and has integration with Excel, allowing us to download reports easily.

There are cases where the system does not meet our reporting requirements. For example, only the first user can click 'run' during testing, and subsequent users have to click 'continue manual run', which can create reporting errors. Improvements are needed so that the system can continue running without creating a new run.

We have been using it since 2022. However, we do not use it frequently and only use it when we need to conduct testing.

It is stable. I would rate stability as eight out of ten.

It is quite scalable. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I have not contacted customer support yet.

Positive

I am not the person who set it up, so I am not aware of the setup process.

I manage the costs, so I don't know if it has saved money. However, the cost seems okay for my company.

We did not evaluate other ALM solutions.

It is a good tool for managing tests.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

To store all tests including manual and automated tests along with the results of tests after they were executed. Tracking defects, scheduling test sets for automated UFT tests to run unattended from the Test Lab, storing the test cases, and also storing the test requirements in the Requirements Module. 

The Application Lifecycle Management Process with ALM includes the following phases

• Release Specifications: Develop a release-cycle management plan to help you manage application releases and cycles efficiently.
• Requirement Specifications: Define requirements to meet your business and testing needs.
• Test Planning: Based on the project requirements, you can build test plans and design tests.
• Test Execution: Create a subset of the tests in your project designed to achieve specific test goals. Execute scheduled tests to diagnose and resolve problems.
• Defect Tracking: Submit defects and track their progress and status.

Multiple users can execute tests independently on their own computer because the UFT scripts are stored in ALM/Quality Center which is web based. All test cases are stored in one location (ALM) which makes it easier for users to access and maintain.

New users can quickly be added and set-up to have access to given projects in Quality Center in less than an hour.

The Defect Module can be customized to your department's needs. At a former company, we held regular meetings and used the Defect Module with a projector to go over the defects found during the previous week.

• Ability to execute automated UFT scripts from Quality Center and store the results
• Ability to customize modules, particularly Defect Tracking module on company specific needs
• The user can export a lengthy test case with a lot of steps from Excel directly into Quality Center, which saves a lot of time. Conversely, a user can export a test case with all steps from Quality Center to Excel.
• Users can save screen shots of defects and also perform manual testing by using Manual Runner that verifies whether each step passed or failed and save the results along with information such as the date/time executed and who the tester was that performed the manual test.

When a particular version of Quality Center has reached end of life, the customer is forced to upgrade to the newer version to be eligible to get technical support. The upgrade process can be time intensive and requires a lot of planning. Quality Center seems to originally designed for a Waterfall process. However, the newer versions of ALM are more adaptable to Agile testing methodology.

The BPT also known as Business Process Testing can sometimes be very time intensive and sometimes might not be very intuitive to someone who is not familiar with BPT. ALM/QC supports IE but does not support Chrome which a lot of users like/want to use.

History of Quality Center including other names and versions:

On September 1, 2017 the HPE testing tools officially became Micro Focus. It is too early to see how the transition to Micro Focus will change things. I am keeping an optimistic view that Micro Focus will continue to invest in R&D and place a priority on customer support. I believe a lot of long-time customers would like to see things run like they were back in the Mercury Interactive days, which was one of the most innovative software companies of its time. If Micro Focus develops the right strategy, they could become a dominant player in the software testing market.

It is beneficial for the reader to understand the history of Quality Center since it has gone through several name changes and versions, so I have listed the chronological events below:

1. Mercury Interactive originally came out with TestDirector that included versions 1.52 to 8.0.

2. Mercury renamed the product TestDirector to Quality Center in version 8.0.

3. HP acquired Mercury and rebranded all Mercury products to HP. Therefore, Mercury Quality Center became HP Quality Center.

4. HP released version 11.00 and renamed it to HP ALM (Application Lifecycle Management).

5. In June 2016, HP released ALM Octane.

So essentially, the tool at one time or another has had the names TestDirector, Quality Center, ALM, and ALM Octane. Essentially, with each version and name change there has been added functionality.

10 plus years.

Sometimes when ALM is open and there is another browser open, Quality Center will crash.

No issues encountered, in fact, it's very straightforward to add users.

Customer Service:

9/10.

Technical Support:

9/10.

I have worked at companies that used open source tools and ALM/Quality Center. I have also worked at a company that simultaneously used both Quality Center and Rally.  Rally is also a good tool and seems to be developed more for the Agile methodology. However, when using UFT we always used it with ALM/Quality Center because we could store all of the run results from automated tests.

The initial set-up required a lot of resources, such as the Oracle DBA, because Quality Center stores its information in tables in a database. You also have to plan and coordinate with System Analysts what servers will be used along with the architecture.

N/A

Giving an ROI on a software product is a complicated task. I like to use the Space Shuttle as an analogy. From an economist's point of view, he or she might say the Space Shuttle program cost billions of dollars and did not see nearly that amount in hard dollars generated from resources/time saved in return. I believe NASA did get paid to put satellites into orbit via the Shuttle for private companies but it was less than the whole costs. On the other hand, a scientist could say the Space Shuttle program made many significant discoveries and also put into orbit the Hubble Telescope which discovered and took pictures of the Universe that was not possible from Earth. The Economist would just use a formula to calculate a number stating it is a bad ROI. The Scientist would say the Shuttle definitely added value by making new discoveries that advanced science so far that it cannot be measured in dollars and say it is a good ROI. My point here is that "what is the ROI" is a common question at companies and it can vary greatly on how a person approaches and perceives it.

With all this in mind, my answer is that Quality Center definitely adds value to an organization and over the long run has a positive ROI that will keep increasing over time primarily by saving time for users the more they use the functionality of all the modules. For example, using Quality Center to schedule automated test suites to run unattended increases ROI.

For licensing, find out the number of users who will be using it concurrently, and use that number as a starting point for the number of licenses to purchase. Quality Center is pricey, but cheaper is not always less expensive.

No other options were evaluated.

Write out and document all the steps and resources beforehand, and make sure everything is in place before implementing. Make sure you read the minimum requirements listed in installation instructions needed for all hardware (i.e. servers, etc.) and double-check it to ensure it is met.

We use it for recording our requirements. We use it for recording our test cases and the data is done within the ALM itself. And, during execution, we use it to update services and to log defects.

The solution reduces testing time, although not in all cases. But it is capable and in some cases, like for web testing, where we are easily able to capture screenshots and videos within the ALM workflow itself, or the test execution steps, it really saves us time. Otherwise, the guys have to keep on capturing screenshots into a file. Here, they can upload  everything in one shot. In that aspect, we have seen some savings in execution and, while they are not that drastic, it does help.

When it comes to the test planning cycle, if I have my regression cases, they could be almost 40 percent of the cases and they are repeated. So instead of uploading them again, I can easily replicate them in ALM. That is one way I am able to save and I would estimate that saves around 25 to 30 percent. The other part is when it comes to the execution steps. The savings are not so drastic but they could be between 5 and 10 percent.

The best thing is that you can see your current status in real time. Our people are deployed mainly offshore, and we have some guys working onsite as well. We have close coordination of the teams using calls. To see real-time updates, you just log in to ALM and you can see exactly what the progress is. You can also see if the plan for the day is being executed properly, and it's all tracked. From the management side, I find those features very valuable.

The ability to connect all related entities and to reflect project status and progress is the main thing that, as a manager, you are able to see: progress in real time. If the guys are updating the status in real time, meaning that as soon as they finish execution they update the status, it is really helpful.

If you ask the testing guys what is most valuable, for them it's like a one-stop, central location for every project, where every artifact and everything else is recorded. It is a single point where you can store everything. It's very easy to track and escalate. The solution does a lot of things which will support you in your project delivery phase.

When it comes to managing multiple projects, as long as everybody is actually recording all the requirements in the Requirements module of the tool, and from there the test cases and test plans — if everybody is doing that — it is really helpful. When we look at the status, we can actually map it to the requirements and we can see which of the requirements have been completed end-to-end, what we're spending, and so on. However, one thing we see is that not everybody uses the Requirements module to log the requirements. For certain projects, people just start using ALM from the time they upload the test cases, during test planning. In such cases, I am not able to see all the information. But for the projects where ALM is being used end-to-end, it is really helpful. The tool itself is really good. It all depends on how you are using it.

In terms of the solution’s ability to handle a large number of projects and users in an enterprise environment, I am sure the solution is capable. Our current usage here is not so large. But I previously worked in companies where around 300 users were using ALM for everything. In that setting, it was a central location where we could see all the results in real time. Here, I handle around six or seven projects simultaneously. But I have seen people who are handling up to 30 or 35 projects simultaneously, all using ALM. I've seen other organizations where people use it completely, for all their projects. There may be different managers, but it is a single location where everything can be tracked. It is scalable and it is pretty user-friendly as well.

In ALM, when you start to execute something, you can record and capture screenshots and videos. Once the team was trained in those features, I could see that they started recording and that they were doing the execution. When they close the last test, the recording is attached automatically. The tool is capable and, again, it comes down to how people are using it. If they are using it in the right way, we are able to capture everything.

ALM only works on Internet Explorer. It doesn't work on any other browser. In my opinion, Internet Explorer is generally a bit slower. I would like to see it work on Chrome or on other browsers. We have other applications that work perfectly fine with Chrome. It is not a major problem, but browser compatibility is an issue. And if you're using a Mac, it doesn't work.

We have a digital platform and we have done a lot of automation using Selenium there. Those tools have the ability to work in Chrome. But I am not able to integrate ALM completely, end-to-end. For example, using the automation tools we have to initiate test execution from ALM and then take all the results and upload them back. So I'm not able to work end-to-end because of the browser compatibility issues.

The majority of our guys are working on Windows and they have IE. For manual execution, I've never seen a problem. But when it comes to automation, I have an issue.

We've been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for about eight years. Our company has been around for almost 11 years. Out of that, for about eight years we've been using HP QC, now known as ALM. We've been using it continuously throughout that time.

I just recently returned to this team. When we started the testing phases here, I was leading the team. I moved out and I just joined it again three months ago. When I left, we were on version 11 so we must be on 12.55 now.

The solution is on the cloud, it is not on our premises.

It is pretty stable. I don't think we have seen any issue. The availability is always 99.999 and it has never been down unless there is a planned outage. 

In the last two years, we have seen issues for two or three hours, but that is the maximum we have seen. 

When there is a planned outage they always notify us in advance. Otherwise, the application is always available. Our guys work in multiple shifts. They work throughout the day and they work at night as well and it's always available.

If we request any kind of support, they are always there to help. They are very good.

Before ALM, we were only using Excel. But along with ALM right now, we also have some projects that are using JIRA, and there are some people who are using Confluence. The digital teams here are using JIRA.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had engineers come in and they gave us training and showed us what we would be doing. They were very supportive, from the customer onboarding perspective. They did a very good job. Initially, there was all this complexity. We didn't know how to manage it because it was very new to the team. They came and trained us very well. To put it simply, the onboarding process was amazing. We have monthly sessions with their team and we have continuous contact. It's pretty organized.

They started the planning two months ahead. Everything happened in a proper, planned way. That is something I really like about Micro Focus. The initial installation took almost two months. In part, that was because of internal problems. We were using Excel and some other tools. To migrate from there to ALM took some time. That included moving the data. We had to make sure that whatever data we had was not lost and that even the number of test cases was the same as what we had before.

Upgrades happen in a single day, or sometimes two to three days.

In terms of the implementation, it happened a long time ago. They first asked us for a timeline and they then held multiple sessions on the features and the abilities of the tool, with multiple teams over the course of two to three weeks. After that they came and deployed ALM itself and tested the compatibility with our machines, because we had some desktops and laptops. That took some time. Micro Focus gave us an installer that we had to push to all our machines. Once all the machines were updated with the installer, we started using it.

We have definitely seen return on our investment in Micro Focus. Imagine the amount of hours that our guys would be spending tracking stuff in Excel. If you look at the number of man-days that my team would have to spend on that and at the licensing costs, of course it is worth it. I'm very happy with it.

The pricing has been the same for the past few years. It is reasonable. It is not very high. Of course, the cheaper the better, from our point of view. But the tool and its quality are amazing, really good. And including the support their team is giving us, I think the price is justified. It's a fair price.

We did not evaluate other tools at that time. My manager and I — we came from different organizations — had both been using HP. I was using HP QC 9.0 when I moved here. When we started off our testing stream, the only tool that came to mind was HP. In addition, HP was one of the vendors that was being used for testing other stuff in our company.

Even now, we are not looking at other tools. 

It's all about the mindset. ALM has a lot of features. We, ourselves, are only using about 30 percent of the features. If you are expecting that when you start deploying ALM you'll be using everything it has, that's not the case. Of course the tool has all the features, but there are some customizations that can be done based on your needs, and the Micro Focus team will be able to help you with that. It's all about setting expectations and telling them exactly what you want.

Initially, we were not sure what we wanted to see. But after some time we understood that there are so many features. For example, the reporting part: ALM has automated reports but they require some things to be entered at first. If your team has the skill to set up your own stuff, that's good. If not, the Micro Focus team can support you. ALM can automate reports so that, at the end of the day, it sends out an email so your team doesn't actually have to prepare all that information and send it.

To make full use of ALM you have to invest some of your time. It has a lot of features. Most people will just use the basic stuff and they will be happy with it. But if you start exploring it, you will find it has a lot of capabilities. And they are all included in the licensing cost. Don't just go with the flow and keep doing what you're doing. Spend some time and ask ALM the right questions and they'll be able to help you. You will get more benefit out of the tool. That is one thing I have learned in using the solution.

Micro Focus is still investing in the product and releasing valuable features. We have been asked to upgrade our version so that means they are working on upgrading features and are fixing bugs. In previous versions, I was seeing that things were a bit slower. It took time to actually load. But now, my team is saying that it is fine.

In terms of security, ALM has controlled access. Every user has his own login and password. We restrict access. There is one admin on our team and he's the guy who controls who accesses our systems. Before we create a user ID for someone, they have to go through a review process. We need to understand which team he is working for and for how long he will need access. In that way, we keep things in control. As for uploading our data, I don't think anybody will be able to access it. It's pretty secure.

Right now we have 35 licenses for 35 concurrent users. But the number of actual users is around 400. It's being used by our testing guys as well as business people and even our senior management. If they want to see reports in real time, they log in and see them. From that perspective, it is really helping us.

We don't have many people involved in maintaining it. I don't have a dedicated person on our side to manage it. Micro Focus manages everything. I have one point of contact and she takes care of everything.

For me and for our organization, it's a really good product. I'm really happy with it. It's a 10 out of 10. It meets my needs completely.

I use the solution in my company for test management. The tool is basically used for the testing process.

The tool has some limitations for the dashboard, especially when it comes to 20 or 25 of them, which is sometimes not enough, and one may have to use a custom Excel to help extend the dashboard.

The tool needs improvements since it is an old technology. OpenText ALM / Quality Center's improved version is ALM Octane but it does not support some of the traditional parts of the original product. Some of the traditional parts are missing in a lot of areas of OpenText ALM / Quality Center. It is difficult to directly transfer OpenText ALM / Quality Center to ALM Octane. Some of the classic OEMs have limitations, especially when used in an IDE network.

There is a need for the tool to check where changes in UI or UX need to be made. The technology used for UI and UX are not user-friendly.

I have been using OpenText ALM / Quality Center for more than ten years.

I rate the technical support a five out of ten.

Neutral

I have experience with IBM EAM.

The product's initial setup phase is easy.

During the product's installation phase, I will not count on the configuration part because it is based on the user requirements. Helping with the setup of the tool for a group of people in an organization can take around two or three days, including the setup and installation.

It is an expensive tool. I think one needs to pay 10,000 USD towards the perpetual licensing model.

Speaking if the tool has improved our company's life cycle management, I would say that even OpenText wants to change to an application lifecycle. The tool can be helpful for delivery and for sale.

In terms of the quality assurance features in the tool, users can see what their requirements are, and it mostly starts off with the testing phase and for high-end developments as well, and it has a requirements model. The tool is a requirements management application. The tool can be used to produce very complex health care tools.

The tool can support and execute scripts based on commands. People can do everything that is simple to be able to meet their requirements with the help of OpenText ALM / Quality Center. At the end stage, the tool can be used to judge the quality of a project.

The reporting module is included with Excel, Word, and some Microsoft reporting tools.

It is possible to integrate the tool with Excel and some other solutions.

Feature-wise, OpenText ALM / Quality Center is the best.

OpenText ALM / Quality Center is a specific tool that was not from OpenText in the beginning, and I feel it was from Mercury, but it has proven to be a professional tool in terms of visibility, quality, and other such areas. I know that TCM is associated with Sentinel.

Right now, I wouldn't recommend the tool because of its price. The tool can be recommended to those who are willing to pay the money for it.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

We use the solution mainly for test cases, SAP projects, and login defects.

The solution's most valuable features are its bidirectional traceability, the solid structure within the test plan, and the test lab.

The solution's reporting could be improved. I noticed that the solution does not have a good approach to exploratory testing. Exploratory testing, which has a good screen capture and allows people to pursue their testing before designing the test cases, seems to be more in demand. The solution has evolved over the years but needs to catch up with some of the user community's expectations.

I have been using OpenText ALM / Quality Center for 16 years.

I rate the solution’s stability nine and a half out of ten.

I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten for scalability.

I've used almost all the testing products, including Jira and IBM.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

We have seen a return on investment with the solution. The tool has saved at least 30% to 40% of our time. The solution we used before OpenText ALM was very time-consuming, and it wasn't well structured. The traceability of OpenText ALM is very solid, and we have seen some significant gains in terms of our traceability.

The solution's pricing makes it more challenging for companies to buy it. Only major companies that can afford it use OpenText ALM. Jira is free for the first ten users, which makes it more attractive for smaller businesses.

As a professional tester, the solution's best features are traceability, test coverage, identifying requirements, and mapping the appropriate test cases against the requirements to ensure coverage. The solution provides bidirectional traceability for requirements to test the defects. It is a solid way of tracking and managing the overall testing activities there.

The solution is deployed on the cloud in our organization. I would advise users to take the time to understand the tool and work it through. It may seem a little complex at first, but the complexity is a result of the tool's capabilities and sophistication. Once you understand the tool quite well, it meets most, if not all, of your requirements.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We used Quality Center for test case management. We wrote and uploaded test cases into it, and we also executed them manually. We could track the results of the test cases, and we could also track the defects that were found.

We also used it for higher-end requirements management and traceability. The managers and other stakeholders could track the requirements and see how they were being tested.

The most valuable feature is the ST Add-In. It's a Microsoft add-in that makes it much easier to upload test cases into Quality Center.

Moreover, the solution has additional features, like integration with multiple tools. For example, they have integrated with IBM Rational Integration Tester, which is a tool for API testing and web service testing. They have also integrated with Selenium.

There is room for improvement in the scalability and stability of the solution. 

I have experience using this solution. 

I would rate stability an eight out of ten. The solution does crash at times. 

oI would rate the scalability a six out of ten. There is room for improvement here. 

The initial setup is quite easy. 

The deployment doesn't take much time. It is very fast.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. It is a pretty good tool. 

It's not a simple tool, but it does have a lot of features and considerations. It really depends on the level of the user. For example, some users will be working on the test execution, while senior levels will be tracking the requirement analysis. I work with both levels to track progress. So, it's a tool that can be used by people at all levels of experience.

We were using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for our test management for lots of products. I installed ALM myself, and we were using it for SAP deployment. We were using Requirement modules, Test Plan modules, Test Lab modules as well as the Defect modules in ALM. Not only for this product, but also for other companies like Cooper, Active, Delphi, Allegis and DLM for test management.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very good test management tool especially for writing test cases and uploading. You can even upload the test cycles from Excel. You get the defects and the reports, and also some automation using EFT which works with ALM. All these features are good.

In terms of places for improvement, Micro Focus is an expensive tool. We see nowadays that there are other products coming, and Micro Focus is more expensive and there are lots of license costs. Lots of companies are not taking it because of the cost.

It would be a good idea if they could deal with some user features and take a look at the cost. Because there is a lot of maintenance. People buy licenses and then every year they need to pay around 18% support charge, et cetera. It depends on the companies. Some rich companies buy it. Mid-level and smaller companies may have difficulties with this one.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very recent name. It really started back in 2000, almost 20 years before. This product belonged to Mercury Interactive. After that HP bought it. From HP, Micro Focus bought it. I have been working on this product for the last 20 years. Initially they called it TestDirector. After that it become Quality Center. Now it's ALM.

As far as performance is concerned, it is a very, very, very robust tool. It works. The only thing is the number of licenses. Because you buy licenses of 50, only 50 can concurrently use it. There could be 400 named users. 

It requires low maintenance, and the user creation is simple. If you want to quickly add any users, or if you want to quickly create a project, it is straightforward and easy.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is scalable in terms the database size and the repository. It has storage in two places; service level and at Windows level, the File System level. Lots of documents get stored in the Windows level, the File System level. So as long as you have good enough space, 100 GB or 150 GB is good enough. Only two limitation. One is licenses. The second is the server. So we usually recommend around 100 GB, 50 GB to 100 GB, which is enough.

We usually have 200 users using it. Usually, people buy a 50-user license but that could be used by 300 people, 300 users, because not everybody will be logging on at the same time. So scalability depends upon the license.

In terms of maintaining and deploying the updates, it does not take more than one person, probably not even that. I would say 1/4 person for this role. That person is a system admin. I used to do that, too. I was doing upgrades and configuring all myself. At the same time I was managing the actual deployment of the test phase.

This takes about one day a month.

Tech support handled most of the issues handled well, but not where there is a problem. Whenever we buy a product from Micro Focus we usually buy from Micro Focus directly. Or there are second sellers and we can buy from them, and they give you support. Whenever we have a problem, Micro Focus is very good at support. We log a ticket and they support it.

Initial setup is very easy. Usually there are two ways of doing it. We needed two servers; an app server and a database server. Usually Micro Focus, like other companies, installs it on their cloud or you can install it yourselves. It's not very difficult. I was doing that too.

When we have the ALM we can install it very quickly. It does not take much time, maybe three or four days. Once the system is ready we can pretty much install ALM and apply the license, which then deploys to users. Configuring is very easy. I was creating users and different groups, putting in lots of configuration.

Usually, whenever I work with the clients, I recommend ALM for the separate deployments and separate implementations because it's easy to use and good with those things. However, because of the cost there are some clients that cannot afford the high price, or can afford it but they don't want to pay that much.

As SAP Solution Managers, we try to use it. But people also use Jira. Jira has a very high level test management tool. So people who can't afford the price go with Jira.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a good solution. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a nine.

Our primary use case for OpenText ALM is for automation use cases. We can map all the test cases with the requirements. The automation test cases allow the business to clearly see what is automated.

OpenText ALM helps my organization by allowing us to capture requirements and map them to the test cases, including automation test cases. 

It also allows us to schedule test runs and manage everything through ALM. It provides a good return on investment since the business can clearly see what is automated and what is not, as well as check the defects raised in ALM.

The most valuable features of OpenText ALM include its integration with the automation landscape, the ability to capture requirements and map them to test cases, and the capability to schedule runs through ALM. 

Features like BPT and the way they make it easier for end users to understand the split of test cases according to functionality are also valuable.

Costing is an area that needs improvement. It is a bit on the higher side and can be managed better as there are new players with better pricing. Aside from this, there are no other challenges and the solution is quite effective.

I have been using OpenText ALM as a customer for three years, and we are going to complete three years this December.

I rate the stability of the solution at a ten out of ten, indicating that it is very stable.

The solution is easy to scale.

I would rate tech support nine out of ten, indicating very good support.

Positive

The initial setup is easy since it is a SaaS-based solution.

There is a good return on investment. We can map all the test cases with the requirements, and the automation test cases allow the business to clearly see what is automated.

The cost is a bit high and this could be improved as there are new players with better pricing.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.