OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

We use this solution for test management purposes. For sorting set cases, testing for possible defects, executions, and so on.

Defect management is very good. It's not a lightweight solution, you can do a lot of customization with respect to the workflow. It also definitely supports the waterfall model.

Only Internet Explorer is supported. That is a big problem. They don't support Chrome and Firefox and so on.

The browser limitation is the biggest problem —  nobody wants to use IE in this world.

The browser issue is a big deal because it doesn't work on Mac. That's a game-changer, but now, I assume they have come up with a giant tool, ALM Octane.

It would be great if they brought the waterfall model with ALM Octane, or created a new interface as such. 

I have been using ALM for roughly 10 years.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very stable solution.

The technology itself is a little outdated — previous generation technology. Patching and other things can be a little difficult. 

It's also very scalable.

Regarding technical support, one word comes to mind: terrible.

I don't expect everybody to know everything, but there have been instances when I had to tell them the answer and they'll tell it back to me; however, of course, there are some knowledgeable people working there too. Sometimes it's very good, sometimes it's very bad — there is no in-between.

The initial setup was a little complex. For example, compared to installing Oracle applications, ALM is straightforward and easy.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is very expensive. Personally, I think that it's too expensive, but I don't have another tool to compare it to.

For anyone who supports the waterfall model, this is a great tool. I would not say that it's not a good tool. It is a great tool for managing processes and tests. It's very stable, but you will see some glitches here and there — that's inevitable. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give ALM a rating of seven.

The most valuable features of ALM are in the new upgraded version of 12.53. We're able to more accurately document our test results, our actual versus our expected results, with the new screenshot functionality. That is the most useful part of the tool for me right now. Of course, we use it as our testing repository, and it's basically the way to show the work that we do as QA testers, and to have a historical view of those executions.

Because we can trend repeatable results, we can look at trends of things that are continuously working well, and things that continuously get broken within the software development process. So it helps us improve our testing quality.

Sprinter, I think, is a good part of this ALM tool, but it has some limitations for us. Based on the type of software we use - we have some web based applications and also some power built applications - not able to capture all the objects, or the way that we develop our software. We're not able to use it as much as we would like to. So Sprinter would be something I would like to see better integrated with the different types of technologies used by the software companies.

I'd like to be able to improve how our QA department uses the tool, by getting better educational resources, documentation to help with competencies for my testers, to make sure they understand how to use the tool. Do they really understand how they're using it? Why they're using it. So, for me, that would useful.

For us, so far, it's been pretty stable. Because we have such a ginormous amount of historical data, we've had a little bit of an issue with performance. We were working on copying and creating a new database for that because we have products that we use, FDA regulated products, and we can't get rid of those testing results. So we have to keep them for the life of the product.

So of all of the things that we've experienced, or had issues with, it would be the amount of data we're able to store, because we have to keep everything.

That would go to what I just mentioned above. We're looking at ways to improve being able to capture more results without impacting our products.

I haven't used tech support because we have a couple of different layers within the business unit. So I have people that I can go to, and then those people go to tech support. So it is utilized on a different level, just not by me.

When selecting a vendor to work with, the most important criteria are flexibility, availability, and scalability.

I would say it's a good tool. You have to invest the time into learning the different ins and outs of the tool, and become educated on it. I think it can scale as much as you allow it to, but you have to put the time into learning what it has to offer.

All the modules that we have in ALM, one of them is the test module. No better tool in the market than ALM because the foundation is what you see, it's been in the market for so long. I really like the test module.

But it's not only limited to the test module. It is the entire application that's a management tool. So we use it for requirements as well. And the link is between your requirements and your test waves and test plans, and everything is in there. So it's a pretty good tool.

If you don't use any tool to manage your application people will - like some teams we have who use Microsoft Word documents to do their requirements, and Excel sheets to plan their test cases, and write the test case and then execute and store it. In the long run, that is not going to be helpful because this is a structured way of exhibiting your development. That is what had been missed.

So when we started using ALM in our organization - we'd been using QC for so long - when we finally started using ALM and we tied the requirements module to the testing module, that definitely benefited. It's because we can show a lot of data in there and now we can link to some 15 years of back data. Most of the applications are there from so long, so we still need to do the core functionality test. But we don't need to redesign and we don't need to search for Excel sheets. We know exactly who ran it, when they ran it, how the execution happened.

We do have some suggestions on reporting. Most of the time we need to download data and then we create reports ourselves. If there was a little bit better reporting available that would be great. The reporting is the one thing that we definitely want them to do more on.

Yes and no. Once in a while we'll have some bugs and they will fix them, but other than that it's pretty stable.

We have assessed ALM right now to be pretty stable. I don't see too many things that are missing in ALM right now.

Scalability is good. So far we have not had any issues with scalability. For the last three years we were using it as SaaS. Before that, for a while we had on-prem, but after moving to SaaS we have never had any problems. We run around 300 projects, we have about 100 projects which are light. We've got, at most, 100 users at any given time.

We've used it multiple times. One of the reasons is the SAP tab. There is this plug-in that connects with SAP, and whenever we do an upgrade or something we need to test with the SAP tab, and the software has been very helpful in doing that.

I already know the response that we get from support. We have a dedicated CSO who engages whenever we need something, when we sat we need this report, we need that data, then he will definitely immediately give us that.

No. It's been there about three years. I wasn't part of the team at that time.

If you are using ALM, you had best educate your users to use the entire solution, not only the testing module or not only requirements module, because you will have way more benefit using the entire tool. It is designed to supplement the entire lifecycle and will definitely improve your productivity and traceability. If you use bits and pieces of the tool then the whole intention of developing the tool is not fully utilized. So use entire module, all the modules in ALM.

Cross project customization through template really helps to maintain standards with respect to fields, workflows throughout the available projects.

Traceability feature really allows you to maintain linkage between all the test artifacts, starting from Releases>Requirements>Test Coverage>Test Execution>Defects. ALM allows you to maintain complete end-to-end process.

Business Views has really come in handy for all users, as different kinds of reports can be created very easily and published to all the stakeholders.

Synchronizer add-in has allowed us to integrate Microfocus ALM to other third-party tools like JIRA, ClearCase and ClearQuest, and helps to eliminate the isolation between these tools.

ALM has brought great collaboration among the team members.

Helps to maintain all the test artifacts in one place as a central repository where all teams can contribute and collaborate with each other.

Dashboard

• Defect ageing reports need to be included as built-in
• Availability of built-in report related to Defect Removal efficiency
• Availability of built-in report for calculating Defect Density
• Availability of built-in report for end-to-end traceability
• Availability of reports specific to Automation projects.

Management- Libraries

• Ability to include Test Set data in Libraries so that Test Set execution can be transferred to other projects using Library functionality

Test Lab

• Ability to upload Test Execution results from Excel to HPE ALM

Test Plan

• Ability to maintain Manual and Automation projects in single HPE ALM project
• Composite execution of manual and automated scripts would be helpful

Defects

• SLA-related ability for defect module where ALM would send automail to stakeholders for the defects which have not been updated in a long time

I have been using the solution for 10 years now.

ALM is quite a stable application. We had some issues during the initial setup but it's been stable since, due to right level of competency/expertise we have in the organization to maintain the ALM setup.

No scalability issues.

Technical support is not that great. We really need to push to get HPE support to provide a resolution for technical issues. Tech support needs to improved now, as it has deteriorated badly.

HPE ALM was our first choice.

Initial setup was not that complex.

HPE has always been flexible in terms of pricing and licensing, but we are a bit concerned with the fact that it is now in the hands of Micro Focus and things may change.

No.

Think about the below before you start implementing this product:

• What’s the total user base you are expecting to on-board?
• How many projects/countries/entities are going to be on-boarded to the platform, and then design the hardware configurations accordingly.
• Do you have any other tools which need to be integrated with this product? Is there any ready-to-use integration already available or do you need to build it from scratch?
• Note that this product does provide the ability to control user access and provides security.
• Talk to your network security team and check if anything specific needs to implemented along with this product, like dual factor user provisioning, reverse proxy, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2. Does this product support all these?
• Check the organization plan in terms of roll-out of latest Operating Systems, Browsers. Does this product support those latest OSs, browsers, versions, etc?
• Hire a HP ALM administrator expert who can guide you to implement the product in the right manner.

ALM is a giant library, and Performance Center and LoadRunner require it to run.

We use it to support Performance Center and it runs underneath it as one big system. The advantage is that we can test applications before they go to production, and as long as we're testing in a production-sized environment, we have a pretty good idea how an application will perform in production.

It's like the overall software framework, and Performance Center is just leveraging that framework for storing things such as tests, scripts and test results. ALM works together with LoadRunner and Performance Center as one big system. As newer protocols are developed and newer technologies come along, it's nice to see HPE be ahead of that as much as possible so that by the time that it's really needed, they're already ahead of the curve and they've got most of their performance issues resolved as far as how the software's going to run.

The stability on the old versions is good. On the newer versions, the bleeding edge is still being worked on.

It's very scalable. No issues with scalability.

Premium support is great, but before that when we just had general support, it was not all that great. We had issues with trying to get support to call us back on tickets and turnaround time on resolution.

We previously used IBM Rational.

It's not exactly straightforward. Their instructions were not all they could have been, but we still got it installed.

As far as we know, it's the best tool on the market right now. They're considered the Cadillacs of the testing tools right now. Don't necessarily go with their most recent version code release right now. It kind of depends on what your needs are and the size of computer shop that you've got.

We're primarily using the solution as a testing tool where we're recording our testing data. Our use cases vary, however. Right now, for example, we're merging two companies together. When we are doing that, we have various test cycles and we have gone through three test cycles so far. aNow we're heading into UAT. So we're testing all aspects of the business, including HR, operations, gas, and electric generation. We're doing pretty much our stand-alone tests, or unit testing. Then we will then go into our end-to-end testing where all of the systems are working together. After that is done, we'll be heading into more of our business testing, our UAT.

The ability to really deeply analyze everything down to individual users has been very useful for the organization as a whole.

Most of the features that I like the best are more on the analytics side. We are generating our analytics from the execution module. After your tests are executed, we're able to generate all of our analysis for our presentations and to present findings to leadership. There are a lot of different views that you have access to. You can show your pass rate, your fail rate, etc. You can pretty much drill it down all the way to what each tester is doing. That's one of the really good features that they have at ALM.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution is very easy to use, even right out of the box. You don't need to do a lot of configurations.

You can create roles and assign various rights to each of the roles per project. You can really customize the product.

The uploading of test scripts can get a little cumbersome and that is a very sensitive task. They could improve on that a lot. It's really important that this gets better as I'm loading close to a thousand test scripts per cycle.

I've been using the solution for about three years at this point. It's been a while.

The solution is extremely stable. We really have not had any issues even after upgrading and taking the whole system down. It's very user-friendly right out of the box. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution can scale well. If we need to add different modules to it, it has the ability to expand. You do need licensing for that. However, the out-of-the-box features included in the solution are great.

We haven't really scaled it just yet. We have about 250-300 users right now. They are largely tester, developers, admin and project managers.

Technical support so far has been great. I've found that we can tell them about an issue, and they're usually back to us within the same day with a solution. We're quite satisfied with the level of service provided. I'd rate them ten out of ten.

This is the only solution I have ever used. I don't know if the company worked with something else previously.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. It's easy. We didn't face any difficulties at all. I wouldn't describe the process as complex.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with ALM.

If you want a good tool that is robust and is very user-friendly and capable of supporting a program with multiple streams or multiple workstreams, ALM would be the perfect tool. It can basically track all of your testing. It also allows you to collaborate with all of your testers, stakeholders, etc. 

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten due to the fact that it's user-friendly, and it has the ability to track various projects or various workstreams of a program. Also, the test scripts are reusable. For example, let's say if we are going to utilize those same test scripts for another project, a couple of years down the line, they are available, and you can do real-time updates within ALM. That's really helpful.

We are a consultancy. We use ALM Quality Center for handling waterfall type projects. If our clients are taking an agile approach, then we talk to them about Octane, which is the agile solution.

It has a brand new look and feel. It comes with a new dashboard that looks nice, and you can see exactly what you have been working with.

It is pricey.

I have been using this solution for at least 20 years.

It has been very stable. There was only one minor issue that a customer just stumbled upon. It really wasn't that big of a problem. It was something that was introduced in version 15.01 patch 2 but doesn't appear in version 15.5. It is something that they added to the product or fixed with the product, but the issue is back again.

It is scalable. You can have thousands of users running this product at the same time. 

We are a small consultancy, but we have customers who are running hundreds of thousands of users concurrently with the product and have no problems with it. They are running them on a worldwide basis.

Tech support is pretty good overall. There was a time when it wasn't all that great, but it is pretty good right now. It has vastly improved over what it was probably five years ago.

Ours is strictly partnership, so we haven't dealt with any other ALM type of products from other vendors.

It is fairly straightforward to set up. I didn't have any problems with it.

I don't know the exact numbers, but I know it is pricey. When we talked to the sales reps we work with from our company, they say, "Well, Micro Focus will never lose on price." So, they are willing to do a lot of negotiating if it is required.

You need to take a look at what you're doing right now and how your test requirements, defects, and so forth are organized. If you can, try to bring them under one umbrella. ALM Quality Center does all of those things. In the past, I found a lot of customers using a variety of tools to do these different things. One for requirements management, one for defects management, one for testing, and so forth. It is much easier if you can bring everything under the same umbrella, that is, ALM Quality Center.

ALM Quality Center is geared towards waterfall type projects, and a lot of customers are moving away from that right now. Octane is a solution for the agile model. In ALM Quality Center, we have what's called a test lab and a test plan so that you can organize your tests. The same capability is not there in Octane. It would be nice to bring that feature over into Octane so that we can easily see what are the tests and organize the tests any way we want.

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

• Test management for multiple products
• Risk-based testing
• Requirements mapping
• Reporting.

• Reusable test cases
• Requirement traceability
• Reporting.

Test cycles.

Bridge to JIRA and Tableau.