OpenText Application Quality Management Reviews

We have it deployed in our Data Center and it integrates with it to write a custom application on it. You have to use a sole technology, which is risky. It takes more advanced developers than someone who does JavaScript and makes web pages.

Micro Focus is selling two test management solutions, ALM/Quality Center and ALM Octane, TM, which are identical, except ones built on newer technology

The user interface is fully web-capable. It's a website, and it runs on a browser.

I like that it integrates with the Jira solutions. Similar to SmartBear TestComplete, and another solution, where they add test management into Jira. 

All of them use the same data model. You basically have a release, a cycle, and then you have requirements, you attach those to the cycle, then you have tests, and test sets made of tests. It's all the exact same thing. They got it right because everyone has copied it.

ALM is a dated application, and I am researching to see what other solutions are available.

We would like to upgrade to be more modern.

If you want to extend it, they use ActiveX which was put into a browser to go to the internet, but it never had security built into it. It is what Microsoft Office is based on.

It hasn't kept up, while others have and are adding new features and tools.

I would like to be able to use free keyword searches, where you're not just limited to SQL queries.

The software gets leapfrogged because you make a lot of investment in building something. You're selling it for five years, and meanwhile, all of the other tools are improving. Another vendor comes along to make the same thing that took you three years to build, he built it in six months.

It's all easier to make. It's always a cycle. I just look around to see where we are at in that cycle with test management software.

I would like to be able to search easier, not just do SQL queries, being able to do free keyword searches on the data. That's valuable.

I have been working with Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for a decade.

We are using the latest version.

The stability of this solution is good. We never experienced any issues with bugs, glitches, or any crashes.

We have not issues with the scalability of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. It is a scalable product.

In a given day, we have 50 persistent users, then another day you may have 75 to 100 people with 30 users who are testers.

We have a contractor who supports us. The company's technical support, and it all goes through them. They are the middleman to us. They are on our site, and they run it.

I was not involved in the initial setup. It was set up by other people.

When I look back to four or five years ago, it would have been rated a 10, but now I think that it has 's probably fallen back to a six or a seven out of ten. I would rate Micros Focus ALM Quality a six out of ten.

I think if you look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant Reports, it pretty much indicates that as well.

We use this solution primarily for doing test cases and running UFT cases.

The integration with UFT is nice.

We are having a lot of problems with this solution. One example is that users are able to run test cases, but the permissions are managed by another group.

I don't have the ability to create test sets.

A lot of the testing steps are ad-hoc in nature where they have a lot of prerequisites, but they don't specify what the prerequisites are.

The organization that I am at is not very good in the sense that even finding test cases that need to be run is very difficult.

The UFT tests don't work very well and it seems to depend on things as simple as the screen resolution on a machine that I've moved to. Specifically, if I move to a screen with a different resolution then it throws things off.

I first started using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center in 2011.

We are using version 12. It has a new name, it's called HPE application Lifecycle Management.

The stability of the hardware is okay. It's just the tool itself is not easy to use at all.

The scalability is not great at all, especially with the licensing model.

I have never had to use them because we have an in-house group that manages many of our issues. I don't know what their interactions have been with Micro Focus, but I have personally had never reached out to them.

My experience with it, in general, is that the initial setup is not easy and that upgrades are dreaded. Companies tend to not go through the upgrade process because it causes many different types of issues, especially on the database side. This seems to be a longstanding bug with the management of permissions that goes all the way back to quality center days that have never been addressed. 

I would say that the initial setup is not easy at all.

The licensing model is an area that can be improved.

The cost of licensing depends on the number of VMs that you are running test cases on and it is not cheap. To the best of my recollection, it is several thousand dollars per license.

We are having a lot of problems with this product and we're now looking at other options.

This is a product that I do not recommend but if someone were in a situation where they were intent on using it, my advice is definitely to plan it out ahead of time. Don't try to wing it and learn it on the fly. Have someone who knows the tool and can set up the proper authorization because otherwise, it will be like ours, which is a mess.

I would rate this solution a three out of ten.

I primarily use the models from Quality Center. The requirements, the plan, lab, and effects, et cetera. I use it to merge my entire cycle of debts.

One feature that is very nice that our team uses a lot is the Excel add-in. It's a tool with add-ins, extra models, that you can use to export and import data from Excel, Microsoft Excel. It's been extremely useful for us.

The solution overall is very good and very solid. It's robust.

The stability is very good.

In the world of agile, the solution needs to make testing better. They need to arrange their tests with a very high speed of tests. Quality Center is a little bit old in terms of approach. It needs to be modernized. I have to go through many cycles, et cetera, in order to register everything correctly. I need more flexibility to adapt to the new methodology of agile for Excel. That will require more speed. Currently, due to the relative slowness, takes a lot of time to use the tools very well. 

If the solution could create a lighter, more flexible tool with more adaptability to new methodologies such as agile, it would be great.

I was in contact with my support team here, and there is a new release of Quality Center for agile. That is called Quality Center Octane. However, my support team has not made it available to me yet. I was waiting to see the new version of Quality Center Octane, to see if it would have more flexibility in agile. 

I've been using the solution for about ten years now. It's been a decade. It's been a long time.

The stability is very good. It has very good capabilities. It is 99.99% stable. We haven't had issues with bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash and freeze. It's good.

The scalability of the solution is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can.

We have about 1,000 users on the solution.

Technical support is a black box. It's not good. When I look into things on the site, it's very difficult to find the information and help I need. On a scale from one to ten, I'd say it is a five.

We tend to get support from offices based in America, and we are in Brazil. It's my understanding that there isn't a team here in Brazil. Central support may be in Honduras. I've only gotten through one time. 

They need to do better. We aren't satisfied with the level of service or the process that has to happen before we can get help.

I'm not sure how easy or difficult the initial setup is. I don't know due to the fact that the setup is done by a support team and I am on the side of the user. To set up and maintain the tools on the server is not my job. I also do not know how long it takes to deploy the product. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to comment on it effectively.

That said, to install a new station on the client-side, not the server side, is very quick.

My company is just an end-user and customer. We aren't a reseller or partner.

I'm using a variation of version 12. It may be version 12.3.

If you have a large enterprise like me (I work in a bank and there are 10,000 people who work here) and have a large setup, this solution is very solid. For a minor company that is a smaller startup of maybe 10 or 20 people, it's a good idea to use another tool that is more flexible. 

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

We use it for managing requirements, testing, and defects.

What they do best is test management. That's their strong point.

HP-QC does not support Agile. It is designed for Waterfall. This is the number one issue that we're facing right now, which is why we want to look for another tool.

We're a pharmaceutical services company, so we require electronic signatures in a tool, but this functionality isn't available in HP-QC. We don't have 21 CFR, Part 11, electronic signatures, and we need compliant electronic signatures.

Some of the ALM tools can toggle between tabular format and document format for requirements, but the same feature is not available in this solution. There is also no concept of base-lining or versioning. It doesn't exist.

I have been using this solution since 2010.

It is glitching now. We have an older version, and it doesn't work well with the latest version of Windows. It hangs a lot.

It is pretty easy to ask for additional memory. It is implemented in Azure, so we can just ask for additional space.

We have concurrent licenses. If we count the number of users, we have around 350 users. They use it on a daily basis.

Our license was procured through SAP. It was indirectly purchased, so it is very difficult to contact the technical team. We have to go through SAP to get feedback on our issues. Support is difficult, not very friendly, just because we have an indirect relationship with Micro Focus.

This is the first one that our company used.

It was simple enough. It did not take much time. The first time we used it only for testing. When we used it for requirements management, it was a little bit more difficult, and we had to re-train our users on how to use the tool.

The tool was simple enough to learn by using the manuals. I learned how to configure the tool, and I conducted the company-wide training. I maintain and configure the system.

It is very expensive as compared to other tools. We didn't get their premier version. It is a lesser version, and to upgrade, there will be an additional cost for us. 

I would recommend others to find another tool because the interface itself is very outdated. It looks very '90s. There are a lot of better, cheaper tools out there. That's all I can say.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a five out of ten. It must have version control and electronic signatures.

The primary use case is test management, e.g., test executions using UFT combined with Business Process Testing. We do also requirement traceability, where we pull requirements out of a source system, then we link test cases to those requirements in order to have a coverage matrix.

It empowers us to do more testing. Our testing is being done for customers. 

The solution enables us to conduct risk-based testing. We link this solution to requirements of a certain risk factor. Once it's covered at least one time, it will show us in a report that it has been covered. Most tests are running automatically with UFT, so the check is already there in the automation, and there's no impact to us.

The Test Plan feature is the most valuable because of the test execution.

Security is covered. HTTPS works well. There is also support for LDAP over SSL. Those are the most important security features.

Within Quality Center, you have the dashboard where you can monitor your progress over different entities. You can build your own SQL query segments, and all that data is there in the system, then you can make a dashboard report. That works fine.

Managing multiple projects is possible when you have the full ALM license. However, we have the Quality Center license, which can be managed poorly. This is because you cannot look or report across projects.

We don't use Single Sign-On because this is available from version. Therefore, we do not use it right now. Also, it needs to be tested and we haven't tested it yet. With test automation. If you have Single Sign-On and want to make use of another user, that can be challenging. It is good for normal users to use Single Sign-On. However, it's not really a must at the moment, though it is good that the solution finally supports SSO.

Making Quality Center available to connect to external tools is doable, but it takes some work. With our current version, it is not fit for external entities. Connecting to external entities is easier to work with and report in using the newer versions. However, if you really want to use other tools, I would suggest giving ALM Octane a try.

The defect management module has room for improvement. E.g., for Jira tickets in defect management, they could have a direct link with Jira. However, with Micro Focus Connect, you can set up a link between Jira and Quality Center. 

Requirements management could be improved as the use is very limited. E.g., they have always stated that, "You can monitor and create requirements," but it has its limitations. That's why companies will choose another requirements management solution and import data from that source system into Quality Center. Micro Focus has also invested in an adapter between Dimensions RM and ALM via Micro Focus Connect. However, I see room for improvements in this rather outdated tool. I feel what Micro Focus did is say, "Our strategy is not to improve these parts within the tool itself, but search for supported integrations within our own tool set." This has not been helpful. 

I want to see Atlassian as part of the ALM solution. ALM Quality Center is more from a waterfall approach where Atlassian has already evolved into more of the DevOps and agile part.

I started using Quality Center ALM with version 9.2.

I just engaged with my new customer to do an upgrade. At the moment, it has been stable on all versions of Quality Center. However, I'm quite positive that will room for improvement will be needed shortly after we release the newest version of Quality Center.

Do not wait too long to upgrade. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to upgrade to the latest version with the newest features. Just like buying a car: You do not buy a car, then not go to service.

It is scalable in terms of high availability when you add an additional node because it's licensed for ALM. For Quality Center, this makes it less scalable. However, this is the perception from the vendor that the Quality Center addition is not for big enterprise. It's for a corporation, but not for an enterprise. Normally it's for bigger companies: 2000-plus users with over 1000 projects and domains. Then, they need to scale up with additional nodes, which will make it scalable enough for ALM.

It very much depends on the support engineer that you get. In the past, I've noticed that some really do not know the tool. Sometimes, I challenge first line of support or can come up with a solution faster than the support, but that's because I've also provided technical support for ALM in the past on the behalf of HPE. I know a bit more than the normal user.

Sometimes the support is very good, and sometimes it's a bit poor. E.g., if you go to the second or third of line support engineers, they really know the product. I've also worked with R&D in the past, and that goes beautifully. 

The installation is quite straightforward. Then, the implementation is based on one project, so it cannot go wrong.  This is for a very quick start. You will need more skilled people in your projects for implementation if you want reporting, traceability between requirement tests and defects, and release management. 

I always see ALM as an enterprise solution, so I don't go for the project implementation. You also need to maintain it. If one project has an issue, it may be very different in another project. There's also an issue when you have a user who is working multiple projects. E.g., where does the user have an issue? From a maintenance perspective, project implementation is not very handy so I always try to treat it as an enterprise solution, not as a project solution.

Testing time has decreased for manual execution because tests are being executed with UFT.

ROI is very difficult to say. If you don't test, you don't know how good or poor your quality is, but effective testing always costs money. However, it is very important for your return investment to know the value of your tests. What I've seen until now is that it's not being monitored that much. We have this tool because we need to test and prove the quality of the tests that we have been doing, but there will always be bugs and defects in production.

The solution has the ability to handle a large number of projects and users in an enterprise environment with the correct license.

Most vendors offer the same pricing, though some vendors offer a cheaper price for their cloud/SaaS solution versus their on-premise. However, cloud/SaaS solutions result in a loss of freedom. E.g., if you want to make a change, most of the time it needs to be validated by the vendor, then you're being charged an addition fee. Sometimes, even if you are rejected, you are charged because it's a risk to the entire environment.

With IBM Rational Quality Manager, you need to stick to the rough process and first train your end user versus ALM Quality Center's basic features, which are very easy to understand.

Make sure you have your build requirements and which features are important. Are you running projects for DevOps, agile, etc.? Also, make sure that you can evolve your tooling and not stay on the same tooling for years, knowing that your business users grow faster and have different needs.

Micro Focus does invest enough, but most investments are now going towards ALM Octane. I've seen that they are investing in adapters where you can say, "We're going to migrate from ALM.net to ALM Octane," if not entirely, then partially. There will always be projects in ALM.net, and they will keep maintaining ALM.net because there are many customers on it. Customers do need to realize that IT is changing and that you need to modernize as well.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10), though I would rate it less for DevOp/agile.

We use it as a test management tool where our requirements and everything we need are entered into it and we manage the test cycles. When new products come out, the requirements are gathered and captured. Based on that, the test scripts or test cases are created and uploaded. Eventually, the functional analysts or testers run different test cycles, such as integration, user interface, and user acceptance test cycles. We log the defects with it as well. Based on the metrics, if a product qualifies, it is moved to the next cycle.

We have seen multiple improvements using this solution. One example is that one of our customers wanted to see the defect numbers in the same grid where test execution happens. We were able to provide that. Whenever a defect was raised for a particular test, the defect number updated automatically in an integrated, single view. That meant we could see the status of that step. If it failed, we could see that the defect number had been assigned to that particular step.

We also have a custom tool that we have created to disconnect a user. Sometimes, a user may lock the test scripts and go for a coffee. Usually, a system administrator would have to be there to disconnect that. But we created a solution where test managers or test leads have an option to use the username and kill the session so that other users can log in and start working. This is one  of the best-practices we have implemented so that the time involved in test execution will be reduced. There are a lot of dollar savings when executing each cycle.

Overall, it has absolutely reduced the time it takes to do testing. Initially it might be very difficult for the users to execute and then update the test script status and the defects. But after two or three days, they are used to the navigation and it can save a lot of time. If we were using Excel or doing things manually, they would need to store the details and pass them on via shared drives. That approach would also make consolidation very difficult and a person would have to collect data to create a report. ALM is an integrated tool from which we can get reports.

The most valuable feature is the Test Lab, when compared to any other tool.

With test execution, you have an option to create custom fields. It is also really user-friendly. With other tools, we only have restricted fields and we cannot customize or add new columns or fields that users can make use of while testing. ALM is very flexible for creating new fields. It is easy for users to understand the application.

It is also pretty easy when managing multiple projects. We can actually create the domains in the tool, and under the domains we can create a project. Based on that, we can manage things very well without any confusion for the users. They can log in based on the domains and select their respective projects. Most of the equivalent test management tools don't have that option.

The solution is also really secure. It will only open within our network. And in the next version it has access roles and a single sign-on feature where users don't need to log in physically with their usernames and passwords. It automatically takes the authentication and goes. That is a very good feature because we can log in to the laptop and it goes automatically, making it very secure. Because in our version, 12.55, we don't have SSO enabled, we are doing a PoC of version 15, which has this feature.

We cannot rearrange the Grid in the Test Lab. It is in alphabetical order right now. But sometimes a user will want to see, for example, the X column next to the B column. If they came out with that it would be useful for us. They are working on that, as we have raised that request with Micro Focus. They have not given any definite dates, as there are multiple requests from different companies, but they are working on it. We have 14 or 15 of our own columns. So every time they want to validate details of, say, SAP security or something along those lines, they need to drag to the right. They wouldn't need to do that if there were an option to reshuffle and save the view.

I would also like to see them provide a better reporting structure. They have a Business Views Microsoft Excel Add-in that appears as an additional tab in MS Excel. If they could improve that a little more, integrating it better with Excel, it would be very useful for all the stakeholders, helping them see the reports.

I have been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for the last six years.

It's very reliable. It is a mature application. It's very rare that there is a crash.

The scalability is very good. 

We use it for most of the projects in our organization, with the exception being small projects. Currently, there are no plans for increasing usage.

Their technical support is very helpful. They provide support 24/7 and they have resolved whatever issues have come up, on time.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I have been here for six or seven releases, new versions, and their installations. It is a straightforward process. It is not that complex, but we have needed the assistance of Micro Focus at times.

We have dedicated staff for deployment and maintenance of this solution. There are seven of us in the company working with Quality Center. One is a technical admin leader who takes care of Quality Center, and another is a project leader. Under them are project support people who work in shifts, 24/7, and create projects and provide support for users' technical issues.

Pricing is not my area, but in general, what I've seen when reading articles is that it is costly. That is the reason most customers are moving to the other solutions, which are much cheaper. That is the opinion of people I have spoken to in other companies.

Quality Center is a mature test management tool, which is used across the industry and, for the Waterfall model, it is the best solution. JIRA is good for Agile testing. Micro Focus has released Octane, but it is costly compared to other solutions, so companies are not opting for it. JIRA has a low licensing cost.

I've worked with multiple tools, when it comes to a Waterfall model of testing, and ALM is the best tool.

The solution enables us to conduct risk based testing but, as a test manager, that kind of testing is only done when there is not enough time for testing the entire solution. That is when we go through the requirements in the ALM Requirements module and see what the most important requirements are that should be tested. Based on that, we mark it as risk-based testing. We create a column and check it as "yes" or "no". Based on that information, it can be filtered and the same test cases will be handed to the Test Lab for testing. That means that the most critical functionality of the solution will be covered. The solution helps segregate, using the requirements, to test scripts.

Micro Focus is investing in the product. It is really good that they are investing in it and that they are releasing new releases. The newest release, currently, is 15, where there are multiple new features. It is useful for our users and, as a company, enterprise-wise, that they further improve the solution.

We started an SAP implementation about four years ago and it was selected as the test management tool at the time.

Prior to us using Micro Focus for this program, my company had been using a lot of manual testing. So we had to reproduce or find scripts over and over again. Quality Center enables us to have a single library where people can reference back as we go through multiple releases. We are able to bring non-SAP systems into the fold as well and increase their productivity as related to testing and compliance.

Having used the tool before, I like the use of parameters, being able to do exports and reports of the data for monitoring of executions, and the defect management as well. I feel satisfaction in that area.

It's really customizable, so I don't know if we're using it well enough, but with the way requirements are managed, there's no inherent workflow or statusing native to the application. Reviewed and not reviewed is the standard. I would like to see the ability to manage the requirements a little bit better.

There were multiple modules to the solution so the requirements can map to test scripts but it can't map to test steps. If you've got a process that's set up and you've got multiple test scripts that are in it, each script has to be linked to the requirement and the whole set can't be. If we're doing process-driven testing, it's more difficult to do it at the script level, which is what we're finding from a traceability perspective.

Having a way to connect requirements to test steps would be helpful.

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

The stability is very good. We haven't really had any major issues. We do have to go through the VPN just the way we have it set up in our network because we are using it within our network and not on the cloud.

Sometimes when we're in through the VPN, it runs a little bit slower, but I think that's just how all the networks connect. I don't think it's the tool.

It has huge scalability. It's been used for multiple applications that we support from large SAP programs to a smaller system. It can be used as a single release. One of the bigger issues is the licensing approach. They have concurrent usage and it's very expensive. They should offer - and we've asked and they've said no - an enterprise-type license where you're not paying every time you want to bring more people into the solution that you know you're going to go over your license count.

We have to buy more licenses and more maintenance. If we could have at one point an enterprise-type tiered license, that would be more appropriate to be able to scale it up even more. People are moving to DevOps for a little bit more of an Agile approach, as well as that it's free versus the cost of an ALM.

At the peak of the project, we had about 300 people using the license as concurrent users. We had everywhere from testers in India and people offering scripts and executing testing. We also have our business folks doing UAT and our technical teams doing our functional testing. Then we have obviously our quality organization going in and verifying the results. We also have our developers utilizing it for defect resolution. So during testing, a defect can be identified, and then we have a separate type of license that's only for the defect module that the developers go in and they can find a cause and put notes against it. There's the test management team and really the whole program at that point.

We have a light maintenance agreement with Micro Focus for the application, but it's primarily for our e-signature capability because that was custom code and we really haven't had any tickets against it, maybe once a year. And we have a certain amount of hours that were allotted. We actually use that for enhancements to our workflows, they help us build that out. We haven't really had any direct needs to go back to Micro Focus for support.

It's a quick turnaround. They have remote access to our environment, they've changed over points of contact on who our support person is seamlessly over the years. They notify us. They let us know and they send us monthly reports on any activity that usually is zeros for them. But when we have needed them, it's a quick turnaround. We've been satisfied.

I've worked with HP Quality Center at a prior job.

I wasn't involved with it when it was first implemented for the program. I've worked on it in past companies, but it was forced to fit into meeting minimum requirements. So now, we're actually in the process of evaluating best practice and integrations with other tools such as Solution Manager and ServiceNow.

We haven't calculated ROI but the time it would take to go through paper documentation versus digital is huge. I don't have any quantitative numbers on that. We also were able to enable automated testing using Micro Focuses UFT, which writes back to ALM for results. The time it takes to execute in itself has a return as well, but the time value is really on the UFT. The write back to ALM and to be able to document results in a single location is key.

Depending on the volume, the annual maintenance costs vary on a percentage but it's around $300 a year per license for maintenance. It's at 18% of the total cost of the license.

Make sure you have an ALM administrator, both technical as well as at the project level or at the application level available to support creating templates, doing a lot of the backend technical work administrative. If things do get blocked, you can push things through. So you do need two technical experts on staff to support the application.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that proper training and governance is not really the tool itself. It's how you use it. They pushed it in to satisfy a minimum goal. We utilized Parameters in our test scripts, but the testers then don't utilize them properly and then there's no governance that forces them to do it. Having the structure to support the application the way it's intended is really key.

I would rate it an eight (out of ten). Obviously there's always room for improvement, but it's an overall good tool.

We are using it for test management. We have distributed teams in three locations with one location in Portland, which is the newest, and also in India. We have a team of around 150 people (developers plus three testers). We are implementing an order migration legacy system to a new system based on AngularJS 5.0. We also have test automation being implemented on this account using Micro Focus UFT. 

Automation is triggered through ALM. We have the test scripts stored in ALM that are triggered through the execution dashboard. Also, the reports are available on the dashboard. 

We do defect management through ALM, which is the typical use case. The defects are raised in our different locations, then the collaboration between the development leads and testers happen through ALM.

We use the Test Plan module where we have test cases related to all our different releases up until now with a few current releases as well. We use the Test Lab tab to pull test cases from Test Plan and do executions accordingly. We have also created some smoke and sanity testing suites where we pull test cases, then execute them when required during the project phases.

Any user who accesses a project gets to know what is the latest status on a test case, from a test case writing or test design perspective as well as test execution perspective. Collaboration is very strong. The communication that the tool sends out along with the log which is maintained is locked in the history. This is for any change at the test case level or within any of the components of ALM. The history helps us to understand what went wrong or when has somebody made a change. Therefore, the history log is a very important feature.

From a collaboration perspective, I can send out emails directly from ALM that, at times, get triggered automatically. If you raise a defect, then it automatically triggers to a particular email ID that the defect has been logged in ALM. This helps to get immediate visibility or attention of the development team from a testing team's perspective.

Initially, we used to lose a lot of time in collaboration. If we do this in a very crude way through Microsoft Excel, then there would be a lot of issues related to version control. Like somebody might say, "I've fixed the defect," and the other guy would say, "It is still open." Now, across the team, we have one single source of truth because ALM helps the whole team to understand the exact status.

Ease of use is definitely one of the strongest points for ALM. It's a very user-friendly tool and the maturity of processes within ALM are amazing compared to other tools. Their in-built reporting does help with getting ready-made reports from the tool. 

The Test Plan and Test Lab setup helps us a lot when pulling test cases repeatedly from a different perspective. If I want to make a sanity pack, then I can pull test cases from that same library of test cases. I don't have to create them again or copy and paste them. 

I love linking/associating the requirements to a test case. That's where I get to know my requirement coverage, which helps a lot at a practical level. So, we use the traceability and visibility features a lot. This helps us to understand if there are any requirements not linked to any test case, thus not getting tested at all. That missing link is always very visible, which helps us to create our requirement traceability matrix and maintain it in a dynamic way. Even with changing requirements, we can keep on changing or updating the tool.

We use the dashboard and have created our own reports. The typical dashboard also helps us a lot to understand test execution progress and the percentage of open defects from a defect perspective. We use the defect aging reports a lot. This saves us lot of time and gives us the right input from the perspective of which defects are aging. Those need to be looked at again and possibly discussed in further detail in the defect triage call about what's the blocker to get them fixed and how we can work in a better way to avoid the defect aging in these manners. 

The vendor is still investing in the product and releasing valuable features. For example, there has been improvements in the overall folder structure. Initially, we just used to have Test Plans and Test Lab. Now, we have the Task Board.

Sometimes I do run my queries from the admin login. However, if I want to reassess all my test cases, then I am still doing this in a manual manner. I write SQL queries, then fire them off. Therefore, a library of those SQL queries would help. If we could have a typical SQL query to change the parameters within test cases, then this is one aspect I can still think that could be included in ALM. Though they would need to be analyzed and used in a very knowledgeable way.

About four years.

It's very stable. We haven't had issues with any sort of stability issues, e.g., no downtime.

We have around 4,000 test cases in ALM, so I don't think scalability is an issue.

We have around 150 users. The hierarchy of ALM users is:

• The admin
• Process leads, who are using it.
• At the lowest level, there are data developers and data testers who access ALM.

70% of our people use ALM and the other 30% don't need to be on ALM.

The technical support is nice. At times, we have needed to wait. However, this is understandable for a few of the issues as they sometimes can be tricky. I would rate the support function as above average. 

The turnaround time varies with the issue, but they're decent enough. The average time is two days. They provide us local support.

I have always used different versions of ALM. I did not previously use a different solution before using ALM.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The process was just about our customization, which we do from our end and is admin guided. This took us around a couple of weeks and wasn't cumbersome at all. ALM is a mature product. We could set up how we wanted to upload our test cases, then structure the different parameters or columns the way we wanted them. The process was quite streamlined.

We did have some internal help, but we didn't have a full-time consultant. We didn't have any external help. We used a team of three people (part-time consultants).

We definitely feel that it has given us a huge advantage from a collaboration and time savings perspective.

It can reduce the wastage that happens in collaboration activities. The effort has definitely gone down. Effort and collaboration have been reduced by 60 percent.

It all comes down to how many people are going to access the tool. When teams go above 20, I think ALM is a better tool to use from a collaboration and streamlining perspective.

At a process level, the maturity within ALM is at the highest level. Now, if I have run the same test case five times within Test Plan, it will gives me a status of that test case based on the last run, whether it passed, failed, or its situation. If I want to know right now from a functionality perspective what functionalities are working for me and which are not, then based on the immediate last run done directly through Test Plan, I can understand that. That's one of its strengths. This is not available in other tools, like TestLink and Jira (we are using both).

Jira has an advantage from agile perspective. For an agile project, it helps to have the dashboard in the way Jira is structured.That's where Jira is pretty useful. We also have three of the defect calls running different ways using Jira. There are a few things from a visual perspective where Jira poses some advantages over in ALM.

TestLink is pretty similar to ALM. It is not really drastically different. It's open source and doesn't have the kind of maturity which ALM has, like the BI page, the history log, or other functions that are present in ALM. It doesn't have that type of strength. However, since it's open source, at times a couple of our clients use it, but I use it very rarely within our projects.

Security is driven by the different user login credentials that are created by the admin. This is pretty typical. In this aspect, all their tools are good.

For risk-based testing, I used to have a different version of ALM that gave me a confidence level. Currently, I don't think our company has bought the version where you implement risk-based testing. However, it does help me to get the required inputs from the tool. Then, I have my own way of going about risk based testing.

I have seen the Single Sign-On. It's nice, but we don't use it in our current project due to a few constraints and a few user experience related issues. Sometimes, people don't want to change and just want to do it the old way. That is why we stopped using it.

I would rate the solution as a nine (out of 10) to keep pushing them to include more features.