OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

Customization is the most valuable feature. I don’t see other products with such a huge and detailed customization feature.

The Web UI and the Administration Page need to improve. These are not issues, but areas to improve.

Web UI: In some version (I don’t remember exactly the version number, unfortunately), Web UI was introduced with limited functionalities but it was cool in my opinion. Web UI has a lot of advantages and the main advantage is that the customer doesn’t have to install a big thick client on his machine. Web UI is faster, lightweight and easy to configure compared to the on-premise installation. But for some reason, this functionality (all Web UI) was removed in the next release.

Administration Page: It doesn’t have any issues. The main idea here is that it was written using old technologies and it would be great to improve/rewrite it using modern technologies. It doesn’t have an impact on the customer, it is more for developers who should support this area.

I have used this solution for five and a half years.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is very good.

Previously, I have used Redmine and JIRA. Switching to HPE ALM was not my decision, I changed my job.

The setup was straightforward.

Just want to advise to use ALM SaaS in case you don’t want to use ALM all your life. It is cheaper and provides you with all the ALM features but for some period of time. Also, you don’t need to install it manually, the entire environment is already installed.

As an advise for developers who will develop such applications I would like to say - always try to support the area in an actual state, i.e., by using modern ideas/technologies if possible. Also, listen to the customer's needs, have flexible customization tools and do not forget about performance.

HP ALM is a good tool for a centralized and coordinated view of requirements, tests, defects, and iterations.

The main barriers of entry are cost and implementation, especially if an enterprise implementation is the best solution

Being able to have one place to review defects, testing progress, and defects was very useful.

Merging 40 different streams, just for defects, into one solution that had good search and reporting capabilities saved a significant amount of time in coordination, defect management, and by consequence, there was better control of the quality of delivered software.

The main barriers of entry are cost and implementation, especially if an enterprise implementation is the best solution

I have used this solution for eight years in a variety of versions and companies.

The biggest challenge was finding the appropriate resource balancing for the enterprise release. It is not very clear how that was going to be implemented due to documentation in 2010.

If there is a need for third-party integration, the documentation is not very good. We were able to integrate with FIT, but it took a very capable programmer to figure out how to do it. Again, this was in 2010. Hopefully, the documentation has improved.

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Customer service was adequate.

Technical support was adequate

We used a lot of home grown 'tools' and spreadsheets in one location and Lotus Notes in another.

In one instance, it was straightforward because anything was better than spreadsheets.

In the location that used Lotus Notes, there was a significant amount of resistance because of loss of control.

Neither instance was due to the tool, but it was due to cultural issues.

The implementation was done in-house.

At a Fortune 100 company, we achieved a reduction of 30% of defects in the first year and decreasing percentages the subsequent years.

The dollar figures were proprietary, but were significant even for an $11 billion dollar revenue company.

The main concern is that there is a significant dollar investment, so do good research to make sure the tool will meet your needs.

We evaluated IBM tools, as well and a couple of Open Source tools.

• Templates: Allows us to standardize fields, workflows throughout hundreds of HPE ALM projects.
• Customizable Events drive workflow: Saves a few seconds of time when we set default values, customizable dependent lists. When we translate this to hundreds of projects and hundreds of concurrent users, the productivity gains are immeasurable.
• Traceability: Traceability from Requirement -> Test Plan -> Test Lab -> Test Runs -> Defects.
• Rich sets of permission settings for different roles.
• Business Views: It is easier to pull reports for novice users.
• OTA, REST API: Utility for adding users and massaging data.

It has improved collaboration between our test teams.

• Client-side ActiveX with patch upgrades
• Support TDD/BDD
• Adding features like Kanban, project plans, resource utilization, and JIRA’s big picture.
• Traceability reporting: If HPE can generate a traceability matrix - Traceability from requirement -> Test Plan -> Test Lab -> Test Runs -> Defects.
• Defects aging report: A look at how long each defect is from the time it is created and how long it has remained at a particular status.
• Reports to build information: Currently, HPE ALM does not support the copy and paste of test instances.
  • 
    How can we duplicate a test set within a project?
  • How do we copy a test set from one project to another, and also copy the associated test plan along with it?
• Reports on automation:
  • How do we capture the number of automation test cases as some automation test cases have multiple test cases in each automated test?
    How do we calculate the ROI of automation?
    How do we determine which test cases should be automated, because sometimes the effort of automation does not have a good ROI?
    How do we calculate the ROI of HPE Sprinter if (1) Automated Script generation is used? (2) Mirroring is used?
    How do we know which testcase is created using Sprinter?
• Requirements coverage reports.
• Cumulative trending reports for test execution and defects outstanding.
• Auto-generation of test summary report.
• Inbuild best practices for fields, such as root cause category.
• Copy of test sets in the test lab.
• Upload of test execution results.
• Offline test defects to third parties and sync upon checking in.

We have been using the service for 18 years.

The solution is very stable, if you have the right person to manage it.

The solution is very scalable, if you have the right person to manage it.

The technical support has been deteriorating since the Mercury days. I would give technical support a rating of six out of 10.

We were looking at other solutions, such as JIRA, due to all the issues I have raised.

The setup was straightforward.

HPE ALM has been sold to Micro-Focus. I am not sure if Micro-Focus will be flexible.

If no flexibility is provided, you can easily move out in weeks, if you have the right resources.

We evaluated Zephyr, QASymphony, XQual, Perforce, and Rational Quality Manager.

For integration purposes, we evaluated Tasktop, Orasi, HP Synchronizer, and ConnectALL.

For automation purposes, we evaluated UFT, Selenium, and Robot.

Below is a checklist for others considering a test management solution:

• CIO sponsorship
• Number of projects
• Number of concurrent users
• Standardization needs
• Ease of control and management
• Access rights for individual roles
• Event driven workflow customization
• Extending beyond test management to TDD, BDD, test data management, test environment, and CI/CD tools.
• Focus on where you want to solve each problem and identify relevant tools for each of these.
• Availability of skilled resources
• Hiring the right resources to manage: There are easily millions of test management users, but it is not easy to find a true-bred expert.
• Keep in touch with what’s happening in the industry. You need to be focused and not swayed easily.
• Know your stuff.
• Support all your users and make life easier for them.
• Integration with automation tools, performance tools, security tools, and Jenkins/Bamboo/Team City.
• Define the test process that ties in with your test management too.l
• Form a training team to constantly train users.
• Open API for customization
• Export of info to MS Excel.
• Ease of migration.

Playback, test tracking, and defect management are the most valuable features.

Playback made it easy to create automated functional tests that could be reused.

Test tracking eliminated the need to track test executions on a separate application, such as Excel.

It provides ease of use, the reporting status and tracking of defects.

I no longer use the product as its price does not fit into my QA budget.

Its pricing does need to improve. As I recall, when I was working at my previous company, we paid over $100,000 a year plus maintenance. At that time, I could have purchased a RadView selection for that much and reduced the annual maintenance to around $15,000.

I have used this solution for about 10 years.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Earlier, we used a home-grown, Lotus Notes-based system. Later on, I moved to a position where HPE QC was already being used.

The setup isn't too easy nor too difficult; I'd put it somewhere in the middle.

This is an excellent tool for larger companies. It has been my experience that it is not cost-effective in medium or small-scaled companies.

While at my previous employer, I evaluated other options and recommended moving to a more cost-effective tool. At that time, I recommended RadView.

Make sure it fits into your cost structure and consider the annual maintenance cost in your evaluation.

• 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

The most valuable thing about the solution is it handles requirements, tests, and defects in one tool.

Most departments and some of our third-party vendors have access, so HPE ALM can be the single source of truth for what we are doing and how things are going.

How they organize content could be improved greatly in an out-of-box way, at least as a possibility for the users. The simplistic folder capability for reqs/tests doesn’t lead the users to a very productive method of test management.

It would be better to have suggested methods such as storing by subject/feature/functional area and to lead users into organizing this way. Then you wouldn’t run into the need to move things around in folders when release schedules/versions change.

Also, the style by which you document your regression tests is more automatic since you stop copying tests to a new folder for each release.

We have used this solution for two years.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.

The level of technical support is very good.

I’ve been around a while and designed a few test management and automation solutions while I was with Motorola. I think our solutions were better, but of course, we had to spend a lot of resources on their creation.

The initial setup was straightforward, as I’m new to US Cellular and the tool/processes were in place when I got here. We are making some changes to drive improvement, but we are also analyzing how to go agile which isn’t easy.

I think HPE tools are too expensive, but dumping them for shareware tools, like JIRA, Selenium, etc., is also very dangerous and is not a silver bullet.

It’s too expensive for most organizations compared to some other tools on the market. I’d look at QASymphony, Borland, and of course IBM, before committing to any of them.

The report feature has helped me to generate a quality index report which is a critical report for management decisions. The report is generated monthly.

There are many reports that are generated monthly from the tools which assist us in making key decisions concerning the quality of software and products.

The product creates a database per project and this results in poor disk space management, as well as frequent backup and restore. This should be improved upon.

We have been using this solution for four years.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.

Technical support is good.

We did not use a different solution previously.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I suggest organizations should attempt cloud services.

We did not evaluate other options before this one.

It is a good product, but it still requires customization.

• Requirements sync and traceability: This allows us to see how many requirements have been tested and to show auditors this information easily.
• Test Execution (Test Lab): This allows us to track our manual tests with date and time and enter actual results and screenshots.

QC has been invaluable in the past for documenting our testing process, especially when needed for audits.

The Active-X technology requires client-side installations that are difficult to manage in environments where the tester's PCs are locked down to prevent installs. Test management is too rigidly dedicated to older ways of testing with scripted test cases. More support for newer approaches, such as exploratory testing or behavior driven testing would make QC more relevant to the way testing is done in many current contexts.

ALM requires that you install client side components. If your organization does not allow admin rights on your local machine, this means you will need someone to run the installation for you with admin rights. This client side install is also limited to Internet Explorer and does not support any other browsers.

As far as the test structure goes, you are limited to to a step-by-step test case with description, expected result, and actual result for each step by default. This makes it difficult to support an exploratory testing approach with ALM. Of course, much of this part of the tool can be customized, but it still pales in comparison to something like the Test and Feedback tool that Microsoft provides for exploratory testing.

My understanding is that the newer Agile Manager product is more friendly to exploratory approaches, but I have not used this product yet.

We have been using this solution for 16 years.

In terms of stability, the QC client crashes often when attempting to expand a node on a tree. Upgrades are a nightmare and documentation is difficult to understand.

There were no issues with scalability, but I have never managed a large user base.

Technical support has gotten better than it was a few years ago, but Tier-1 seems to just go through the motions of asking questions I've already answered.

I have used other solutions, but many do not have the traceability requirements that ALM does.

The initial setup was highly complex, mostly because of the database setup. Upgrades are even worse, especially if you need to migrate to a new server, since the repository needs to be copied over.

Make sure you get the correct license for your needs. The full ALM license lets you use the requirements tab, along with test automation and the Performance Center. You can also just buy the Quality Center edition (Manual testing only), or the Performance Center version (Performance Testing only). I have no idea where they get their pricing numbers from, but they seem to always be negotiable.

I have used Oracle's Test Management solution, Zephyr, Bugzilla, TestTrack, JIRA, and others.

Be sure to have a DBA available when you install. There have almost always been changes needed to the DB when I have installed the application.