OpenText Application Quality Management Reviews

Workflow management is a feature we find valuable.

It provides us with common development and test workflow for defect management.

Linking between modules, with actual field values like those between defects and releases.

I've used it for over 10 years.

The desktop deployment causes issues when the enterprise has locked down PC. The application itself is hosted by HP (SaaS).

Very good, 99.9%

It scales to our needs.

7/10 - it could be better, but usually it's good.

8/10 - the TAM and team are very good.

No previous solution was used.

Straightforward, the only issue is doing patch updates as they touch the desktop client which makes it painful to update.

HP hosts the application with no issues, and a vendor does the desktop update. This desktop vendor is expensive and inflexible.

The tool has been in use for more than 10 years, the evaluation was back then and not known now.

Make sure your desktop team have the skills and expertise to handle Quality Center’s client components.

The overarching lifecycle view, from requirements gathering through to testing and defect resolution. Additionally the ability to customize the user permissions so they can only see and do what their job role permits.

It added structure to the test process and enabled the developers to better understand the QA process. This in turn led to an improvement in the code developed in-house.

As a standalone QA tool it meets the needs adequately, but it really needs combining with other solutions, such as Agile Manager, to get the best full lifecycle solution.

Around 14 years from when it was originally called Test Director.

There are still some issues when deploying to a few end user machines but the install and upgrade process is very easy. Some of these issues will be resolved in later releases.

Very stable with no reported issues in years.

There are options to increase the scale of use and extra modules that can be obtained with the full ALM license.

On par with other big companies, sometimes you need to get past the front line support to get to the real answers.

Good, quick turnaround with ideas and solutions to try.

QA was driven by spreadsheets before the deployment of Test Director.

The documentation is not always easy to follow but the answers can be found on the support forum and help desk.

The initial deployment was with a vendor over 14 years ago, but all subsequent updates have been done in-house.

It's unknown, but I suspect it to be quite significant.

More recently it was reevaluated against Microsoft Test Manager to see if it was still the best QA tool for our needs.

It is still the best QA tool on the market that integrates with most of other tools we use. It allows everyone who wants to be able to see the current quality of the project and control the QA process.

Fully understand the different options out there and the license types. Other tools may offer similar and you will probably want to customize some of the options to get the best out of it. Have not tried the cloud option which would take away any implementation and upgrade issues.

• Test Plan
• Test Lab
• Defects tracking and management

Managing the test cases and defects tracking are the most valuable features, which we use daily.

I like all the features and can't think of anything that needs improving.

I've been using it for eight years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Nowadays, all companies are looking for free software, and for this reason, many companies are developing their own tools similar to Quality Center and using that tool instead. License costs have a direct effect on the ROI of the company.

It's an excellent tool.

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.

The defects section is the most valuable.

It has improved our testing designs and test reporting.

• Ability to export test plans (test cases and libraries) in other formats, such as in Excel.
• Test Lab functionality needs to be changed so you can set test attributes automatically with minimal effort.

I've used it for two years, although not in my current role.

My department doesn't do deployments, but I believe that the team doing it does have problems.

We have a specific department that deals with customer service.

We have a specific department that deals with technical support.

Test Planning and Test Lab modules are the most valuable to capture test cases and track execution. Defect module for tracking defects in testing and to capture production incidents.

The primary HP QC modules, requirements, test plan, test lab, and defect management have become, over time, foundation stones in our project teams development methodology. In each area, the modules provide the fundamental processes to record scope, capture test cases, track execution for each phase of testing (functional unit, string/business process, integration, user acceptance, etc.) and our project management team are all HP QC "savvy" from a standpoint of using the tools to manage the project team, the component releases and change requests, that flow through our team.

The product continues to evolve and improve and we are now on v12.01. The defect module, while fundamental and more or less consistent over numerous versions, is an area we would like to see improved regarding how response time is measured in the standard application. Reporting is another area that could stand improvement - many times the data is simply exported out to Excel for analysis.

We have used HP ALM/Quality Center going back to its days as a Mercury Software product, 2006-2007 and have evolved up thru 12.01 at present.

At Verizon we are 'clients' on a supported application base. Application project teams are supported with domains and projects within a central installation. We didn't deploy the application, per se.

As a client, no, we have not have any major issues with stability. The application is pretty much available during business hours with the exception of routinely scheduled maintenance windows.

No issues to date. We're just a client (one of many project teams supported thru a central HP ALM/QC test tools support team) but the number of project teams that are supported via our central team would seem to imply that the application can scale to support large organizations split amongst multiple project teams.

As a customer/client of a central VZ QA/ALM installation, the few times we have needed to be in direct contact with HP, they have been responsive. We had a better relationship, overall, with Mercury Software before their acquisition by HP, but that was several years ago now.

Most of our technical support questions are fielded by our own in-house QC ALM support team. I can't directly speak as to their relationship with HP regarding direct technical support questions. Where we've had issues with specific installations, etc., they have been quickly resolved, so the assumption, always dangerous, would be that technical support is responsive with the primary vendor.

We have used this application for a number of years now. There have been explorations of a variety of open source, "DevOps-inspired" applications, as a potential replacement. To date, there has been no determination to move away from this application as our standard.

From a project team standpoint, the setup was very straightforward. All the tools are accessible and installable via browser.

We have an in-house one team who are supporting several portfolios within our IT organization. I would say their level of expertise is good to excellent.

I hate to say we haven't taken an independent project level analysis of ROI -- at this point, it's more an integral part of our application support model and a focal point for project level activities. Overall, even if informally measured, it's very high, if by no other measure than how deeply ingrained it has become in our project methodology and project tracking metrics.

Licenses are a major factor -- they are not inexpensive but with concurrent licensing our global IT groups are able to share licenses around the clock.

At the time we first utilized Mercury Quality Center, they were pretty well established as the industry leader in this space. When HP acquired them (2009?) they were the 800-pound gorilla in the test tools field.

For most large companies/installations, you will need to establish a core testing tools support group. This group can handle the care and maintenance of the application itself, the plug-in tools, user management, and deployment to various project teams. I would think taking this one within an isolated project team would be asking for headaches. Many organizations have turbulent histories with centralized testing -- it seems to typically depend on what is business critical -- not only externally, but internally (HR Payroll, for instance -- most companies can't tolerate issues with defects around payroll..

• 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.

I would rate the level of customer service very high.

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.

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.

• Test Management
• Tracking
• Integration with SAP Solution Manager

The processes of both test execution and test tracking have become more transparent.

We use it for big SAP implementations, which provides ROI after the first project.

More flexible reporting would be good.

I've used it for one-and-a-half years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

The support is good, however their response time could be improved.

No solution was previously in place.

It was straightforward.

A vendor was used for support during the implementation, but we had internal knowledge as well.

The implementation ROI highly depends on the size of the project the tool will be used for in the future. For big SAP implementations, ROI will be gained after the first project.

SAP Solution Manager TAO was considered as we are using that tool for Application Lifecycle Management.

But due to the integration possibilities with HP ALM and SAP Solution Manager, HP ALM was the choice we made.

The Open Test Architecture (OTA) and development of the REST API. The OTA is a published set of functions that administrators and users can use to interact with HP ALM programmatically. The most common example HP ALM users would recognize is the Microsoft Excel upload template, which allows users to upload test scripts to HP ALM projects directly from an Excel worksheet.

The REST API sneaked into HP ALM with little fanfare. The REST API has no application overhead and is fast. HP extended the API through patches in v11.0. Please check your current version and patch level to see which functionality is now included in the REST API.

On a recent multi-year project, the average defect resolution time for all defects was over twenty-two days. My goal was to reduce this number by 20%. It was an easy goal to reach because no one realized that 80% of 22 days was still a number out of bounds for defect resolution. I used custom fields, defect workflow and custom reports to move defects through their lifecycle. Within thirty days the defect resolution time was reduced to 3.1 days and averaged 1.1 days over the next eighteen (18) months.

The graphical user interface has the most room for improvement. Not all screens within the integrated suite refresh the same, some screens or activities are self-refreshing and some are not.

I would also like to see the “Disable Quick Runs” added back as a site parameter or built as an internal function within a project.

I've used it for seventeen years (1998 to present). This product was initially developed by Mercury-Interactive and released as Test Director. My first enterprise installation and administration experience with Test Director 2.0 was in 1998.

Over a seventeen year period, yes. The key to maintaining a site today is in patch management. Keep the patches up to date.

When the patches lag too much, it may be safer to build a new site and port the data than to try and patch an existing site in place.

Customer support for this product is with the vendor, not necessarily HP. After a site has been up and running a few years and all the original implementers are gone, it can take some time to even determine the vendor. My satisfaction level with vendors range from acceptable to excellent.

My personal satisfaction level with HP service and support website is low. I get the majority of my technical information from colleagues or third party discussion forums.

In the Application Lifecycle Management space, HP ALM and IBM Rational are the two big players. I recently participated in an evaluation of the IBM Rational Jazz Platform. The client had been using IBM’s ClearCase and ClearQuest for many years. During the evaluation, an unrelated IBM audit detected a long dormant pack of five ClearCase licenses on an active server. The cost associated with this incident ended our evaluation of the IBM solution.

Historically, most people considered this to be a defect tracking only tool. In that domain, tools are plentiful. Over the years I’ve used VI editor on UNIX, Microsoft Excel worksheets Microsoft Access databases, Bugzilla and Notepad for defect management.

The installation and configuration of an HP ALM site is straightforward for those with enterprise software deployment experience. An installation requires at minimum, a dedicated server with an operating system and database connection. The most typical, physical or virtual, hardware configuration I encountered over the years was a single Microsoft Windows server running web, license and application software servers. Both Oracle and MS SQL Server databases respond adequately, and when given a choice now select a schema based on DBA agreeability.

The installation of an HP ALM site establishes a service endpoint for communicating with other applications via Web Services. I believe the configuration and management of these services is the most complex part of a site installation and requires substantial planning to map fields and permissions across multiple applications.

HP ALM resellers typically perform the initial set up and configuration of the HP ALM site and user projects. In some cases, larger testing firms are also resellers and provide the tool as part of the project. I fundamentally disagree with buying a tool from its eventual user.

I advise clients to do the upfront planning and limit users with access to the site administration console to three or less. The planning required for a successful implementation requires much more time and effort than the deployment itself. Deployments are typically scripted while planning requires humans. Access to the HP ALM site console is separate from project access. I have seen sites with twenty or more registered site administrators. I believe this occurs more as a symptom of long term neglect than an implementation issue.

I encourage clients to use the built in service accounts and APIs where practical.