OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

It supports the full test management life cycle. We have other test management tools in place, such as JIRA and a couple others, but ALM provides the broadest coverage from project creation to death.

We have developers, project managers, stakeholders, everybody referring to one single point-of-truth for everything that is related to a project, from requirements, test cases, coverage, defect tracking, and reporting.

The client installation is sometimes quite painful. You need to register some components on the client that need administration rights, which is really tough on the organization. For each upgrade of the software, every minor upgrade, you need to reinstall the client, which means basically somebody needs to travel around and do the upgrades on each client. Basically, what we really would like to see would be a proper web client that has good coverage. There is a web client, but it only covers a very small part of the product, so you can't use it for the full life-cycle, and so we decided not to use the web client.

It deploys without issue.

For us, it's stable. We're happy with the stability.

We have no issues with scalability.

We have had a bit of trouble at times and, in all fairness, sometimes we felt quite left alone. We've approached technical support with real problems and either they referred us to "well, check it on some of the Internet based forums", or "look at the FAQ", or something like that. Also, we sometimes feel left alone. In the end, it turned out that we were better off sorting ourselves on some forum instead of contacting support and opening a ticket. We're in a quite agile environment and if a support call is stuck for 6 or 8 weeks, it doesn't help us.

We were using JIRA before and still are using JIRA. But that is only a section of coverage, so we needed something that has a broader coverage of the process, and the ALM was the choice.

ALM setup was pretty straightforward. We had standard problems like connecting to the active directory and making sure that the missions are set correctly and so on.

Make sure you have full acceptance of all involved or possibly involved groups. Make sure that your management supports it and everybody is happy to use the tool and happy to share a good level of information in the development life cycle. This is where, for us, the most benefit came out of it. If you have a defect, you can easily with a mouse click get the full information.

The most valuable feature for us is probably the full Oracle component of ALM. It allows our users to be connected to other products.

We're able to use it with UFT/QTP for defect management. When it records a test, ALM will produce analyses to do cross-project reporting. This becomes a large repository of data and information that's valuable for us to make necessary improvements.

I'd like to see them move away from a desktop-type client and towards a web-based client, although we've also had ActiveX issues with web clients.

ALM, as a group, has probably been in use for 10 years plus.

Once installed, no issues with deployment.

The application itself tends to be very stable, but when switching to an open-source website, that's where the issues are. So it's not so much the core application having issues. For example, you may find that it would be an Oracle issue and not an ALM issue. But really there are very few occurrences, even after all these years, of a serious application fault.

Scalability is fine. We have in the region 15,000 registered users and up to 2,200 concurrent users of ALM. We don't really have any scalability issues.

Any issues would have to do with what a certain server application is up to. You just need to keep an eye on it.

We have the higher level, premium support. Technical support tends to be quick and reactive to issues and we don't have any major issues with it.

As large as it is, it's pretty straightforward to put in and you can configure it in probably less than an hour.

My advice would be to research the full system requirements you need for the initial install. In corporate environments, once you've got it up and running, it's more difficult to get off of it. Also, plan to scale up based on projected CPU and space that you'll need to get.

ALM allows everyone to work at the same time, doing defects and reporting the same way.

ALM is quite heavy to use because of the process. Everybody needs to do the same process at the same time, and that’s quite heavy. We get a lot of complaints from customers that they're forced to use a process that is so heavy.

It's not always very stable, but that depends on how you implement it in your organization. We put it on a separate server host in Singapore managed by our guys in Bangalore, so they make sure that they’re always available first.

We have a lot of people using it and it works fine.

Technical support is quite good, but sometimes it depends on who you’re dealing with. Sometimes you have bad luck and get a guy who doesn't know much about it, is new, or is in training, but most of the time it’s fine.

ALM is a bit complex since it's scalable and everybody needs to use it. With everyone needing it, you have to open the firewalls to everyone, which makes it complex.

I administer it, and from what I've seen you can create defects and follow up the resolution with defects based on the scenarios that you have created in default program.

Other valuable features I've seen are:

1. Requirement traceability 
2. Dashboard
3. Camera, which helps us to take a screenshot at a particular instant
4. Customized notifications of different instances

It centralized all the defects in our organization. It also allows us to test scenarios in only one bullet, one database, so it’s easier to manage. All the methodology around the testing scenarios is gathered into the same product, so it’s easy for communications between the business side and the testing side because they all know where to find the information.

I’m not an expert in ALM, but if I have to look into some issues or other occurrences, I can easily find my way around. It’s quite user friendly, I would say.

I supervise the team using and providing support for the product, and there are a couple of things my team feels that could be improved upon.

1) We need to move test cases manually from Test Case module to Test Execution module. This consumes more manual interaction. If this could happen with any in-built functionality, that would reduce the manual work and time involved.

2) Email notification list. Emails are not triggering to any member of the email notification group if just any one of the email addresses is incorrect. So, if one email address is wrong in a group of ten email addresses, no one receives the email notification that they're all supposed to receive.

It has deployed just fine for us.

Stability is fine, except for a few pop ups sometimes. We don't understand why we're getting them, but it's generally quite stable.

Scalability hasn't been an issue.

QA Test Management is good. The menus have changed over the years which is nice, and now it is also integrated with other defect tracking systems. Before, it was only compatible with QTP.

We used to use Excel spreadsheets. Using Quality Center as one tool helped us to track just one tool from beginning to end.

Report summaries help me to figure out where a project stands and how much work is left for the QA team to complete.

• This is a great test management tool, but it is very expensive. The price needs to be affordable as it's high priced when compared to other test management tools with similar functions.
• SpiraTest and QMetry can be used on iPhone, iPad, etc., but I am not sure whether Quality Center also works on iOS platforms or Android devises.
• Use a SCRUM board extension to make it more usable for Agile.
• It needs to integrate better with other vendor software, e.g. JIRA, Selenium IDE, and SoapUI.
• It should be easier to use like SpiraTest or QMetry.

I've used it since 2005.

No issues encountered.

Sometimes it runs fast, and sometimes it runs slow.

It has scaled for our use.

They used to respond in 24 to 48 hours, now it's longer, and when compared to SpiraTest, it's not that great.

They used to respond in 24 to 48 hours, now it's longer, and when compared to SpiraTest, it's not that great.

I used the software version of Quality Center, and the initial set-up was straightforward. After changing it to the web version, it was much better.

It was implemented before I joined the company.

6/10.

It's priced high, and they should look into it to make it more competitive.

We also looked at SpiraTest, and it is more affordable than Quality Center.

Check the price and compare to other available tools in the market and decide select the one best fits the needs.

• Test Plan section to capture test cases
• Test Lab to run those test cases 
• The built-in defect management tool

It's helped in formalizing and adding structure to what was up to that point in time a series of checklists that were not version controlled. Also, test results were not rigorously reported back to the internal customer(s).

Report generation needs to be simplified.

I used it for roughly a year on a contract.

I did not choose this product. It was onsite before I started the contract with this particular client. I have seen and used this product at a few client sites.

I did not choose this product, it was onsite before I started the contract with this particular client, and I have seen and used this product at a few client sites.

I was already used to setting up the directory-like structure in Test Plan.

An in-house team performed implementation as needed.

• Ability to link a test case to a defect which increases traceability
• Ability to log a defect and link similar defects to that one defect. Great for not logging repetitive defects
• The content of the test case parameters (Actual, Expected Results etc) are pulled on the defect which nullifies retyping
• Ability to manage more than one project site at a go
• Reporting structure can be done using a self generated graph. Makes reports look professional even if the user is not completely clued up on ways to report.

1. When I started testing we used to test from SharePoint. This was good for the time being but it lacked a lot in terms of design and the priority of defects was not up to standard. There was no sight of show-stoppers and nobody would know of them unless it is communicated with the relevant people. As opposed to Quality Center where it is highlighted in a form of “level of severity” by putting a scale of low, medium and high
2. In Quality Center one is able to attach a screen print as proof of testing.

• GUI colours not that great
• On the defect site, when one adds a comment, anybody who has access to the same defect can change the initial comment. It would be great if the defect comments would not be editable.

I've never done a deployment.

Our organisation did not have any issues with the stability of this tool.

We were able to have a lot of users logged in at the same time with no lag time or any scalability related issues.

You should invest in Quality Center if you are looking for the following :

• High visibility of project progress
• If you cannot afford automation. or are not completely convinced but want to speed up their testing efforts, you can look into getting a Quality Center/ALM plug-in called Sprinter. A very good testing tool that is worth trying out.
• If you want a quick and smooth transition from manual testing into automation. Its smooth because HP holds your hand until your team is able to execute QTP independently. They are also available to see you through any technically difficulties.

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.