OpenText Application Quality Management Reviews

We use all the major modules in ALM Quality Center. From the releases and management portion, we use the requirements, and we create our releases. We create requirements. We link our test spaces to these requirements and we schedule the execution in the test lab. Then we capture our results in Quality Center and we follow the management process that is not only for manual testing. 

We also have quite extensive automated testing in our environment with some of the other Micro Focus products. They are all integrated into Quality Center, like the UFT, we use service virtualization, we have RPA and we also use Mobile Center. Quality Center plays a major role in our test artifacts, our execution, and our order tracking, both in manual and automated.

Quality Center has improved my organization from a traceability and test coverage point of view. We have multiple vendors providing development to my company, Pick n Pay. If we use automation or Sprinter, the tool documents the steps for us as we follow it to the point that we've got a defect, so it's easy to send that information on to third parties so that they can duplicate the defect on their side and then provide us with a fix. 

The other thing is from a regression point of view, with everything documented in Quality Center, it's easy to go back and execute the same test every time with automation.

Quality Center's ability to connect all related entities to reflect project status and progress is great. This is the tool that we share with all our project managers so that they can see the progress on their projects, even if it's a project across multiple applications or what it is within our environment. We set it up so they can have an overall view of that specific project. It is a great tool to use in that sense.

The test center is our way of working. It's fully integrated, we have a test strategy that supports the use of ALM Quality Center. That's the only way that we track progress on projects. We don't use Excel or anything like that for creating test cases or anything. We also have an environment where we follow a more agile approach and we've integrated Quality Center into JIRA for user stories and defect tracking. If it's not in Quality Center, it's not happening. If it's not documented in Quality Center, we don't believe it.

I wouldn't necessarily say that in the beginning it reduced the time required for testing but if you start on an application and you had the four-quarter full version of that, reusability is automatically built into the tool. Then if you've documented the test case, you've got it. You can reuse that test case in multiple instances of releases at execution. You don't have to go and rewrite it if you plan correctly. If there's a change to something with the way you've structured in Quality Center it will filter through. So it brings our maintenance down by a lot less. Even on the automation side, it brings the maintenance down a lot less with the way we've structured our modules within Quality Center.

It has reduced it by around 15%. That's without automation, it's straight Quality Center. If you add the automation, in some of our areas like the digital area, it brought it down by about 45%. In some of the other areas by around 50%.

Quality Center enables us to conduct risk-based testing. Testing is always a measured approach in our environment. Depending on when development is finished and when we go live, we will do a risk-based approach to say that if we have a look at the critical requirements or test cases, this is how long it will take us. We then get sign-off from the systems analyst, the project manager, and even the business to say, based on the time we have, we're only going to execute critical test cases, for instance.

I'm not 100% sure if Micro Focus is still investing in the product. If I have a look at the features, not 15.01 because we still have to install that, but previously from Quality Center 11 up to where we are now, there are a few things that have been outstanding for a while that I believe will add value. And they're not really getting to that. So I'm not sure what their road map is. Unfortunately this year, the Micro Focus Universe was canceled in the Netherlands, because I'm sure there they would have shared some of the road maps with us, but I don't think the communication on their road map is clear enough to their customers.

The execution module and the test planning module are definitely the most valuable features. We use REST for traceability, but those are the two modules that I cannot live without.

From a test execution point of view or the test lab, from an audit requirement, we have internal and external auditors of the major projects that will do an audit on the project to make sure that we follow the right processes and procedures within the TCOE and within our STLC in Pick n Pay. It's easy to give auditors access to Quality Center as a viewer only and they can view everything we've done from test execution and test planning, as Quality Center keeps the audit trail for us.

In terms of its ability to handle a large number of projects and users in our enterprise environment, we have 17 dedicated testers and automation specialists in the test centers and plus or minus another 35 to 45 business users/developers or systems analysts that access the product. From a scalability point of view, we run multiple projects over multiple domains at any given time with everyone that's got access. Quality Center's ability to send out emails when you log defects makes it possible for someone that works over multiple projects to know exactly where to find the defect if they just follow the emails that go out.

We use Quality Center for all of our reporting purposes. We have dashboards that we've created across domains and projects. With all the information already available in Quality Center, it's quite easy to set up all of our reporting. Work management doesn't necessarily want to go into the details of the projects. It's easy for them to just access the dashboards that we create from information in Quality Center, with direct integration to see that. From a traceability point of view, it is a great product.

In terms of the security features, we don't do the LDEF or the active directory integration. We have a stand-alone solution. We can obviously set our own password. We don't enforce password rules at this stage, but going forward with security becoming more important in the company's life, we are going to follow and going to do the active directory integration. We have single sign-on to Quality Center, as it can handle that integration portion into the rest of the Pick n Pay landscape. We don't use SSO.

Browser support needs improvement. Currently, it can only run on IE, Internet Explorer. It doesn't work on Firefox, doesn't work on Chrome, doesn't work on a Mac. Those are the new technologies where most companies move towards. That's been outstanding for quite a while before it even became Micro Focus tools, when it was still HP. Even before HP, that's always been an issue.

Other smaller things need improvement. If you log a defect, you have the ability to upload attachments, but it will only allow you to add one attachment at a time. If you have ten screenshots, for instance, you have to do it one at a time. You can't go and highlight all ten and upload.

Finally, the biggest problem in our environment, and it's the reason we're not necessarily upgrading our solution every time, is when we do an upgrade or even install a patch, there are always changes to the UI. What it means is that we need to have local admin rights on our machine. The next time we log on, we unload all those components to our machine. Now in an environment like Pick n Pay, where not everyone can have local admin rights, it's quite a mission if we upgrade to go around and get to the 60 to 70 PCs or laptops that are impacted to get the users to log on or get IT support to log in with local admin rights to install the browser portion after an upgrade. There are a few .net downloads that need to happen on the browser side in IE and that takes some time.

I started using this product when it was still called Mercury Interactive, from 1997.

It's on-prem, hosted in a partner that is doing all our hosting. It's on-prem and we do our own administration.

The stability is great. I can't think of any time in the last three years where we had an issue with the product. 

Scalability is great. It doesn't matter what the size of your organization is. If your testing area is 5 users or 500 users, this product can definitely scale. Before I joined Pick n Pay, I worked for a company in Kazakhstan and Russia. We used Quality Center across different countries to roll out a big project and at the end, we had a 400-user license to have everyone following the same process when it came to testing.

We have 17 permanent users in Quality Center. They are testers. We have a test manager role. We have automation engineers. We have test analysts, we have senior testers and we have junior testers. We also have systems analysts that we log defects and assign it to them so that they can access the defects module to validate and update the side of the defect. We also integrate Quality Center with JIRA. We have our third-party development happening, where they use JIRA and we use Quality Center, where we can log the defects in Quality Center then via the integration then send it to JIRA. When they update, we get information back on our side so that we are on the same page. For us, Quality Center is the single tool in our environment. Whatever the status of the defect is in Quality Center, that's the status. Whatever the status is of execution of test cases, that's what it is.

In terms of the required maintenance, I have one system administrator for all the products and they're responsible for Quality Center. They make sure when we plan upgrades to do the upgrades, user management, project creation, and integration with the other Micro Focus tools we use. 

Our adoption rate is about 85-90%. There will always be room to grow.

We don't have plans to increase usage. We have plans to increase other things around Quality Center like test coverage, automation, and all of those things, but not necessarily new licenses or additional licenses. We have a base of licenses in our environment. As we get major projects with more resources, we do a rental on additional licenses for a three or six-month period.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten. 

Their support is quite good. There will always be room for improvement. I also know the local Micro Focus support in South Africa so it's easy for us to pick up the phone and phone the local support or the engineers in South Africa. The only room for improvement will be if you log a call and it's in a different time zone, sometimes there's a delay over three or four hours, but that's literally the only negative about it.

Even within Pick n Pay it is straightforward to do an upgrade. First, uninstall then install the new product or the new version, and if you keep to the same database server, it will pick up all your information and all the projects and everything you have. I've also been involved in areas where we run it via the load balancer and if you follow the documentation, it's quite easy to set up.

An upgrade does not take more than two hours. The initial setup might be a bit longer, about four hours, depending on if you have access to the right database server, if you have all the correct admin rights on the database server, and things like that. If you follow the steps in the installation guide before you start with the install, and you get that right, or get your users set up correctly on the DBA side, it's not a problem. It can take three to four hours.

We do the installation ourselves. I have a product administrator for all of the Micro Focus products in our environment who is doing all the administrative duties for us on all the Micro Focus products.

Regarding our implementation strategy, it becomes quite complex if you use other Micro Focus products as well. It's not as straightforward as just upgrading Quality Center. We use service virtualization and we use Mobile Center. For us, it's important that we follow the process to make sure that we're on the most recent releases of all products that can integrate. The integration portion of the Micro Focus documentation is quite important to us.

We've seen ROI plainly. We can do more projects. It's easier to do the maintenance. It might not be rands or dollars savings, but time-saving is definitely there.

From a pricing point of view, I believe it is an enterprise tool. If you are an enterprise organization and you're using SAP or Oracle for your ERP systems, for example, the cost around Quality Center is not that expensive. From a licensing and planning point of view, you should have a hybrid between licenses you own and depending on how busy you are at certain stages within projects, do additional rentals just for those periods if need be. That's what we do in our environment, we have a base of 15 licenses. If we have any major projects coming in where we know there are additional developers, we do a rental for licenses for the period of that project. We charge that project for the licenses for that rental.

We do have additional costs apart from standard licensing from our side. Pick n Pay outsources their hardware, so obviously we have costs for the hardware and backup for our hardware partners that do our hosting. We see this as a tier-one application in our environment. We have full disaster recovery capability. There some costs involved from that side.

Depending on your environment, the strong point for me with all of the Micro Focus tools is that it supports multiple applications and multiple development languages. It's easy to use one for everything in your environment. If you have a look at automation, if you have SAP and you have mobile, you can use the same tools. It's the same with Quality Center. It doesn't matter what you want to test, you can use the same tool to support that testing. 

Make sure that you plan the detail correctly and plan it to the sense that you know where you want to end up. Otherwise, maintenance becomes a nightmare on your dispatchers.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a nine out of ten.

We've mainly been using the product for service requests and for migrating code and scripts for Oracle events.

The solution's value is its ease of integration with the Oracle e-Business Suite.

It's not a very user-friendly product. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is reasonably scalable.

Compared to other solutions, licensing costs are in the mid-range. 

We also evaluated Jira and we've recently decided to move to that solution. 

It's important to check that the product is compatible with your use case. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

Our primary use case for this solution is preparing test cases, and we deploy the solution via desktop.

The independent view of elevated access is good. In addition, the elevated instructions being sent to our SQL is valuable.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the response from customer service and support could be improved.

We have been using this solution for fifteen years. We are currently using version 12 but intend to migrate to version 16.

I rate the scalability of the solution ten out of ten. There are currently over 100 users using this solution in our organization.

We have had a poor experience with customer service and support, and sometimes, we do not get responses from them.

We have previously used JIRA, but ALM was a better solution for us.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment is done in-house.

I cannot comment on licensing as another department handles it.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I'm using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for testing purposes.

What's most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is that it's useful for these activities: test designing, test planning, and test execution.

What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center are the dashboard and the management tools particularly used for management reviews. Currently, what's missing in the solution is the ability for users to see the ongoing scenarios and the status of those scenarios versus the requirements. As for the management tools, they also need to be improved so users can have a better idea of what's going on in just one look, so they can manage testing activities better.

An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is having management visibility on the dashboard. For example, it would be so much easier if there's global information that users could work with.

I've been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for six months now.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a stable product.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center should be scalable, but I don't know what's behind the infrastructure, so I'm unsure of its scalability.

I don't deal directly with external support. I'm dealing with internal support, so I can't rank the technical support for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. I don't deal with their support directly.

My organization previously used HP Quality Center, but I don't remember the differences between that solution and Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. I also don't make decisions on whether to move from one solution to another solution.

I wasn't part of the team who set up Micro Focus ALM Quality Center, so I don't have information on whether the process was straightforward or complex.

I'm not aware of the pricing or licensing cost for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

At least sixty people who are part of different departments are using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center in the organization I'm working for now.

There are people who use the solution once a day, while there are people who use it twice a week, etc. It depends on their positions.

I'm rating Micro Focus ALM Quality Center six out of ten. What would make it an eight or a nine for me is improving the dashboard and adding a management tool that would be useful for management reviews.

We have been involved in a lot of IT projects which need test management and for the test execution process, we are using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

We are able to use Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for test management, defect management, test process, test governance activities, and requirement management. We are able to achieve all of this, the solution is very useful.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center could improve how the automation process works. Addiotnlally, the parallel execution needs to be optimized. For example, if multiple users, which are two or more users, are doing an execution, while we execute the cases, I have seen some issues in the progress.

Most enterprise solutions are moving into the cloud and this solution could work on its cloud compatibility. For example, if I have an Amazon or a Google cloud, I would like to know how would it best fit into their cloud environment.

I have been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for approximately eight years.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a stable solution.

I have found Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to be scalable.

The technical support from Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is good, they are responsive.

I rate the technical support from Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a four out of five.

The initial setup is straightforward, it was not any more difficult than other setups.

The enterprise pricing and licensing are reasonable.

I would recommend Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to others.

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

I used the solution to manage the tests that I would plan and record, and I would manage the flow of defects.

I work for a bank company that has a license to use this solution. I am using the solution through the internal internet, not on the cloud. I am using version 12.

It's user friendly, scalable, and very stable and strong. It's cooperative, meaning that I can assess the test to check it and follow the flow of defects, and the developers and the business can use this tool to follow the test process.

We are waiting to migrate from ALM to Octane. It's the same family of softwares, but ALM is designed for cascade systems. The new version of ALM called Octane is for Agile projects. There is more integration with Agile tools like JIRA and other things. I think that will be an improvement of ALM.

The integration could be improved because with Agile technology you are working more quickly than with a top-down methodology.

I have been using this solution for eight years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable. There are 1,000 users in my company.

I used to go to the site and look for questions and solutions on the forum, but I have never asked for support from Micro Focus.

The setup was completed by another team. I am only a user, and I don't control this part of the installation.

Deployment depends on the size of the project. Usually in Agile, you have three weeks of deployment. It does not depend on ALM because it's very easy to start using and deploy the test and the execution test, then follow up.

There is a team of at least four people for maintenance of the solution.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

If you are looking in the market to compare this solution with other tools that are maybe less expensive, I think that the ALM is more expensive than the others. I think that ALM is the best in class, depending on the size of your project. I recommend ALM for big companies with 1,000 to 3,000 users. Medium and small companies can use other, less expensive tools.

We're pretty heavily dependent upon that tool, in terms of the test management overall and using UFT as an automation, as well.

The product overall it's pretty good. 

From a DevOps perspective, there are a lot of opportunities that they can give in build solutions.

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very user-friendly.

We are looking for tools that offer quick automation for using a low-code, no-code, model testing, et cetera, which can reach more non-legacy technologies.

We are looking for more automation capabilities.

We would like end-to-end agile delivery, which is coming up. I can't comment on if it will properly suit us or offer the integration with other technologies, such as  Service Now or Azure Boards, et cetera. I've seen a few integration issues. It's my understanding that we have to go for third-party add-ons.

We are still evaluating. I don't have many answers yet however, it does look like we have to rely on third-party add-ons to get this integration done. We'd like to have more built-in capabilities. 

If they can bring in inbuilt APIs to connect to this, at least the standard technologies, like Service Now, Azure Boards, JTOC conference, et cetera, that'll be great. 

As we are behind a few versions, I don't know whether anything available is in the latest version in regards to business process testing, where you can sequence the steps and having a collaboration by notifications et cetera, that would be ideal.

We are working to get to the latest version to see what else may have been added or adjusted. 

We have been using the solution pretty much for 15 years now.

In terms of stability, there's no issue. Unfortunately, due to quite a lot of projects going on year over year, we are a little bit behind on the versions. We are on the 12.2. We have to move to 15.5 from QC. While it's a big jump, we are evaluating it as a big jump and see it as a good thing. However, there is the chance that we choose some other products and move from Micro Focus.

I can't comment much on pricing. The reason is, we get the pricing for Micro Focus through SAP as part of an enterprise contract. We don't actually get it from Microsoft Focus and due to the fact that there's a part of the SAP that's 15 years old, we have one of the cheapest licenses probably in the world. That's one of the reasons why it's hard for us to make a business case to move to any other product at the moment, as the licensing is quite cheap for us.

We are currently evaluating Tricentis Tosca.

We are customers and end-users.

From my perspective, it's a great tool, however, the world is now moving towards DevOps. That said, they could bring some capabilities with open-source tools like Azure DevOps. It might add better value for users. That said, this solution is a very stable, very user-friendly tool. The integration, however, is an issue.

If somebody's looking for an independent tool for test management, it's good, however, for other areas where you need to get the full integration without investment on other add-ons, this solution won't easily allow this.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

It is underutilized at the moment because we use this solution for tracking the test scenarios, test results, and defects.

We are looking at integrating a tool that can provide integrations with the other DevOps tools.

At this time, we don't feel that this solution has any value. We are communicating with Micro Focus to address this commission where we feel that it has more value added to it.

The integration needs improvement. It is not integrated with the rest of the ecosystem. It's a stand-alone tool right now used for testing and defects. We are considering and testing Octane because it seems to have more integration with the DevOps ecosystem.

I started using this solution when it was Test Director. This was before it was upgraded to Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. 

I have been using it for the last 10 years.

We are not working with the latest version. Rather than upgrade to the latest version, we are considering moving to Octane.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is quite stable.

It is not a scalable solution. I am not satisfied with the scalability of this product.

We have less than 50 concurrent users.

This is a product acquired from HPE. Before this, we were not satisfied with technical support. Micro Focus seems to be trying to improve their support quality, but we haven't seen it yet.

It doesn't take a long time to install this solution.

It's a perpetual license.

We are reviewing other solutions and looking to upgrade to Octane. We are currently, in the testing phases with Octane.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a four out of ten.