OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

The most valuable thing is the flexibility of the customized options. That makes it more powerful than any other tool. We can customize based on the project and on how we want to control the testing.

We used to have 10 different Excel spreadsheets for one project. Then, we switched everything: paper, Excel, etc. to be done in ALM. There is no outside noise and everything is done under one umbrella.

The canned report site could be improved. You can get your report but you have to do some stuff. If the project doesn't have a good, strong user, they don't get these reports. If we have more canned reports from the ALM site, this will solve some issues.

We have been using the ALM call center since the Mercury times, so the last 10 to 12 years.

It's very stable. In last 12 years, we've probably had two/three downtimes. But, nothing concerning their application.

Yeah, it is scalable. 10 years back, we started with five users. Now, we have 38 confirmed licenses. Over the years, we have grown from having just a few projects to having more than 25 large projects.

Our experience with the HPE support was not great. We have not used Micro Focus yet. Based on that, we switch to a consulting firm, Melillo, for the support because we were not getting direct answer from the HPE support, therefore we switched because of that. Now, we get a better service. Hopefully, with Micro Focus, it will be better.

If someone is doing the setup for the first time, it might be a little complex for them. However, if you are continuously upgrading, then it should be fine, because all of our upgrades we have done in-house. We never went to a company to get that bit done. If you plan it right, you can have the upgrade very smoothly done, so the user isn't affected.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: support and stability of the product. These are the two most important things to us. We want to have continuous improvement, because there are places to improve; we also don't want rapid changes, because they do affect the user, so that balance is important.

The Business Process Testing module and approach to testing in QC is its most valuable feature.

For manual test cases, we need to write test case each time and if any update or CR comes then we need to go to each test case and update, which is very time consuming. But, with BPT we can update it in less time as would otherwise take to update two or three business components. After a refresh, it will automatically update the whole test set, which is over 100 test cases.

I would like to see a bit of improvement in its look and feel.

We've used it for seven years.

There were issues with the deployment.

We had some issues with the stability.

We had some issues with the scalability.

8/10

8/10

Earlier I used Mantis, but it was not user friendly and had no functionality apart from defect tracking. But HP QC is defect tracking by default. Test Case Execution tracking and reporting functionality which will serve all purposes for testing processes.

The initial setup was not complex.

We used a vendor team with in-house machines for the implementation.

For testing processes and improvements, I would suggest you use this product. But, if you're looking at cost, then that might be a concern, but no doubt it is the best tool for testing.

• Integration with other HPE products
• APIs
• Dashboards

Defects and Test management were earlier conducted with the help of Excel sheets. Now, they are tracked in the Quality Center leading to accountability, dashboards, and being tracked in a single place.

Licensing model: HPE has one of the most rigid, inflexible, and super expensive license models. It is an extremely heavy system application. The UI is very dated. Most applications these days have a light UI that can be accessed by pretty much any browser; QC still uses a UI which has a look almost the same for the past 20 years! I am guessing they are doing this to maintain the same look and feel so that they do not have to get their customers familiar with a new UI. When you compare this system's heavy UI with JIRA or TFS, the difference is evident!

I have been using this solution from the time it was part of Mercury Corp as a Test Director. That makes it around 17 years.

Past versions were a pain to use with frequent crashes. The current version also has its own set of problems with HPE deciding to do away with its HTML/Lite version leading to a lot of confusion.

While getting additional licenses is straightforward, HPE's licensing model makes life difficult with customers having to submit a "non-usage" agreement if they do not want active support for part of the licenses. For example, you have 100 licenses and decide to get an additional 50; later on you want to downscale to 50, you will need to sign a document that says that you will not use those licenses even though you OWN the licenses! We found this extremely irritating and impossible to explain to end customers who were (and still are) irate. Support should not have anything to do with usage!

Technical support is pretty good. However, their SLAs are based on locale, timing, etc.

We did not previously use a different solution.

HPE has one of the most complicated installations. Upgrades are a nightmare. Even HPE recommends doing a fresh installation and a cut-over.

HPEs licensing model is inflexible, rigid, and is not customer-centric.

We did not evaluate other solutions.

I would recommend going towards another solution unless you have an entire HPE shop. Other similar products offer more features, are lighter, and are very light on the pocket book, too. We are also moving away from this product, primarily due to licensing costs

We are using ALM especially in business process testings because this solution helps us to connect the business mindset with our business analytics and the IT perspective. When we ran several years ago classical tests business did not understand the quality of our application. When we began to talk with the business process, it helped improve communication between business and IT.

The business value from Octane has benefited us. We see that it can combine all third parties together, free software, integrate all tools together, and create a single pipeline for development.

The previous version of ALM had a greater functionality regarding test cases. Not automatic, BBT and so on, but now in ALM Octane we have only manual testing and integration with other tools.

I think we need to increase functionality to help us to run testing. When we run the ALM project so I think I can give it a better score after we assess our experience.

Stability is OK as we installed the superior version, and now we are in our testing environment. We are investigating the process how best to use it. I heard that we can download a new version and I think after this conference we can begin our pilot project for the real team because we have several areas for implementing developments and several comments.

We have 10,000 employees. There is a huge IT staff so we need tools that can help us to collaborate with each other.

We have used HP technical support for resolving cases and we also asked help from Presales in HP Russia. These guys resolved our problems and helped us to install ALM Octane in our environment.

When we installed it we had a problem because it's running on Linux and we needed to create our infrastructure for installing Linux which was a big problem. The previous version of ALM was working on Windows. But we resolved these problems.

There are many valuable features HP Quality Center has to offer, but if I had to narrow it down I would say the following for me are the most valuable:

1. QC has the ability to integrate and execute test cases with HP QTP with viewable test results.
2. QC has the ability group test cases in a hierarchical format as well as the ability to reuse test cases by calling a test.
3. The ability to integrate with MS Excel.
4. An extremely useful feature of QC is that it allows linking defects with higher level artifacts.
5. Requirements Module, Test Plan Module, Test Case Module, and last but not least, defect module and generating reports.

What makes this product very useful in improving the quality of an organization, is the fact that it has the ability to create a test script and then to write them in detailed steps. For all test case executions, we are able to generate customizable reports and charts, which is very useful for sending reports to higher management. With these great features, QC has made communicating between upper management and the QA team much easier, which gives better insights to our defect tracking and managing. This reporting is then better used for tracking the finances for the team.

There were few issues I faced while using Quality Center, but I’m sure they have been fixed in the new ALM version. One issue I have faced was that while I was importing test cases from Excel to Quality Center, it was not asking to check out the test cases but instead it would overwrite the default test cases and create a new version for it. This was not a consistent issue but it did happen a few times.

I have used HP Quality Center for about 4 years. I have knowledge on the current ALM version but personally have not used it in any projects yet.

Quality Center has a Starter Edition which is usually for entry-level quality assurance organizations and the Enterprise version (originally called Mercury TestDirector) which is for medium to larger level releases. The new release of the software is HP ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) 11 has integrated the capabilities of Quality Center Enterprise with Project Planning and Tracking, Enterprise Release Management, and Asset Sharing for requirements management through application delivery. HP ALM’s intended use is more for large and global organizations.

I’ve personally never had deployment issues.

Quality Center for the most part is pretty stable besides some common issues.

Scalability-wise, Quality Center is an awesome tool. Quality Center itself doesn’t actually place a limit on creating projects or folders. Most of it will depend on the users, servers, and hardware and not the Quality Center client itself. But the more data the user has in a specific module, makes it slower to load on the client. Most of all, it will depend on the implementation.

HP Quality Center is not a new product and has been out in the market for quite some time so there are plenty of online support and help that can be found. Quality Center forums can be found for almost any issues that can come up anytime.

Quality Center has a very intuitive GUI which makes it fairly easy to use and follow. Even if you are a beginner picking up on how to use this product will not take much time. But it can be difficult to implement as it is dependent on the size of the organization on the amount of teams. Identifying current methods of communications is critical to implementing HP Quality Center.

Quality Center can be a bit costly, but the ROI is great for all the great features you get.

Quality Center is a very powerful tool. It is not only a defect tracking tool but also a management tool. It can be used for everything from creating requirements and test plans to test creation, execution and defect reporting.

I primarily use ALM Quality Center as a conversion tool.

Previously, we stored our test cases and results in Excel sheets, which was difficult to manage. Implementing ALM Quality Center has allowed us to map our requirements with test cases and use cases properly.

ALM Quality Center's best features are the test lab, requirement tab, and report dashboard.

ALM Quality Center could be improved with more techniques to manage Agile processes. In the next release, I would like a time management feature to be included.

I've been using ALM Quality Center for two-and-a-half years.

ALM Quality Center is stable.

ALM Quality Center is scalable.

Micro Focus's technical support is functional and responsive.

I previously used Microsoft Azure.

The initial setup was a little complex in terms of setting up the database. Deployment took between forty-five minutes and an hour.

We used a third-party team.

ALM Quality Center is a little bit costly.

Compared to JIRA and other solutions, ALM Quality Center is better for large-scale projects. I would rate ALM Quality Center four out of ten.

In our organization, the manual testing guys write manual test cases through Excel. Then they import them to ALM. They'll move in all the details. Based on that, the automation team will take care of developing the scripts through Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing and they'll add the script into the test plan.

Once the lead has approved the test plan he will move all the test cases into the test labs. If any defect is found in new releases, it is logged in the defects column.

There is a parallel running of automated and manual testing. Based on that, we are able to help the quality of the applications. At an earlier stage, to catch the defects, we introduced API calls and GUI-based. Both are used to catch defects. It helps the guys to understand, quite easily, what the issues are. It is pretty useful for our organization in following the cycle method.

It has reduced the time required for testing. It makes things easy. Everything is already set up, once you have done the requirement map, and it quickens the release cycle. After QA, once it is moved into the build, we'll run both automated and manual in parallel. The automated will be completed within one day and the functional team will generally take three days and they'll know in that time if anything is there or not. Based on that, the business will plan the release.

All the features are valuable. Initially, you can take the response to the requirements and then move into the test plans, test lab, and defect creation. All of these are valuable functions.

Every tab is useful for software testing, but based on some of the requirements for defect creation purposes, we have developed a few of our own tabs. For example, there is a severity/priority module. There we have developed a module or submodule that shows who the business owner is and who the developer is. We also developed tabs so that, when creating defects and root cause, we know to whom it should be reported, so that things are easy to identify.

It is easy for everybody to understand. We can create whatever notes are required. Based on roles we can also make it familiar for business people, so they see what they need to see. That is true for engineers and managers as well. That makes it easy for everyone and gives them access to what they need. It makes things easier.

ALM is user-friendly for everyone. Someone who doesn't know it can learn it quickly, within 20 minutes. At the admin level it might take a little bit more time, since experience is required, but at the user level not much experience is required. It speeds up the validations.

It's easy to create defects and easy to sync them up with a developer. Immediately, once created, it will trigger an email to the developer and we'll start a conversation with the developer regarding the requirements that have not been matched. And we can immediately stop upcoming releases if any vulnerability is found in the application.

One drawback is that ALM only launches with the IE browser. It is not supporting the latest in Chrome. With advanced IE settings, advanced security settings, only if everything is enabled will ALM open. ALM will not launch any of the latest browsers, including Chrome. I'm not sure if this is true for the latest versions of ALM. I'm talking about the older versions. We are not using the latest version in this organization.

It should be launched for all of the latest browsers. If we could test with mobile, it would be better. We need to launch all the browsers to run the UFT scripts. There is a significant UFT mechanism that requires syncing with ALM to run with multiple browsers. 

I would also like to see API calls and AI-based algorithms to run things in an easier manner.

We have also have a minor issue, sometimes, where we are unable to launch the site. There is a back-end server and the allocation space is over what it can handle. We request the server team to clear the server.

Also, sometimes we need to write a query for downloading the execution app. That can be a little bit tricky. It would be better if there were no need to write it and we could simply download it.

I have more than five years of experience using ALM Quality Center. I am an admin-level user in ALM.

It is scalable.

Previously we were using Excel. Then the organization moved the entire thing into the ALM. It is now the central point for whatever needs testing.

When we do a version upgrade, we first take a backup of whatever data is in ALM and move it to a Linux server. There is setup guidance for the installation process. Once we install it, then we'll move the existing data back. 

One good thing in ALM is that there is a predefined template when creating the projects. We just copy that template and everything comes together. Whatever the mandatory requirements are will be there with all the tabs. And, if required based on the business needs and the project, we will create new tabs with whatever fields are needed. That is good.

The licensing determines the number of users we can enable in a particular project. There is a full license and a defect license. Full licenses are used by a few of the guys at our level. We'll give a defect license to the development team only, to access whatever defects there are, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

We did not buy our ALM licenses directly from Micro Focus. We bought them from SAP, which is another solution we are using. We depend on SAP when it comes to whatever challenges come up. The source for us is SAP.

We do have a pricing concern. If we go directly to Micro Focus, they'll sell it at a higher price. If we go to some other vendor, they sell it at a lower price. My manager then says, "Okay, it's the same tool. Why do we need to buy it directly? Whatever problems come up, we can resolve them at our end." Of course, we don't know if we'll have one or two problems or not, and that is the reason to go for the higher price. But they went with SAP to buy the license.

ALM will help your business. It will save time. It makes it easy to validate everything in the latest build. It's easier to plan, cycle-wise. That is one advantage. It also makes it easy for the managers to analyze the results and the progress of the test cases. They are able to track things minute-to-minute. You can use the virtual controls to see the reason a particular test has been edited, using check-in and check-out. That is also a good feature.

Along with ALM the business is also moving to JIRA. I don't know exactly what the business strategy is there, but they're moving to JIRA as one of the sources for creating defects. They're also mapping all the requirements to JIRA.

As a system administrator, HPE ALM can be flexibly configured so that it can accommodate a variety of defined project lifecycles and test methodologies. As a project user, HPE ALM can provide a logical approach in conducting comprehensive test planning, execution, and defect management.

My organization uses HPE ALM to track the progress of testing and quality assurance efforts across projects that we are formally engaged in. The product has provided my team with metrics that provide various insights into the management and delivery of projects with respect to documented business needs.

HPE ALM’s out-of-the-box reporting can be perceived as rigid and limited, to an extent. Knowledge of HPE ALM’s data model is important when setting up certain reports, and can be challenging depending on reporting requirements. Even so, these reports may not translate into appropriate insights that will provide value to a project or management team. The performance of the product may also be a concern, depending on the amount of active connections and data processing that it has to conduct at any given moment.

Four years.

HPE ALM is relatively stable, especially with more recent versions (12.5X). However, it is important to consider utilization frequency of HPE ALM at any given time and ensure that hosted application/database servers are configured to handle resource-intensive transactions to minimize performance/availability/data integrity issues. Micro Focus has published certified/supported configurations for running HPE ALM servers and client computing devices.

In general, HPE ALM has the potential to be very scalable from both a feature and usage perspective. HPE ALM has the capability to create project templates which may then be linked and applied to different projects. The solution also allows for customizations to be applied by individual project. However, an organization must exercise discipline in applying consistent processes to manage and govern any projects which use HPE ALM, to avoid data/information management problems.

HPE’s technical support services are fair but leave a lot to be desired. An alternative to the direct HPE offering would be to pursue outside, well-known, thirrd-party professional support services that have extensive knowledge in HPE ALM and associated tools.

No, I have not used a different solution in the past.

Initial setup of HPE ALM is relatively easy. However, it does become more complex when the product must be configured to meet company needs and compliance policies. This includes site configuration parameters, migrating existing projects from a previous version, securing access, and implementing integration to other HPE products such as HPE Performance Center. Many of these considerations are documented within the HPE ALM Installation and Upgrade Guide.

It appears that most companies choose HPE Quality Center Enterprise or HPE ALM. HPE ALM contains everything included with Quality Center Enterprise, and further adds features focused on cross-project customization, planning, and tracking.

Seat and concurrent licensing models exist; the latter is recommended if a large number of different users will be utilizing the product. There is also the option of utilizing HPE ALM/Quality Center Enterprise as hosted on HPE’s SaaS platform.

This product was already chosen from a historical perspective. Although some high-level research around alternative solutions (Helix/TestTrack, Microsoft) was performed, none of them seem to be as comprehensive or as well suited towards satisfying existing needs.

HPE ALM is a relevant product that assists with test delivery, execution, and management within a project-driven environment. I would recommend others to check out the HPE ALM Help Center and product pages for additional information before making a decision.