OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

• Traceability from requirements to executed tests and fixed defects
• Visibility and reporting on test execution

It gave us control over the development of requirements and tests needed for the bank's transition from bespoke back-end systems to an Oracle banking system.

The user interface is still dated. Writing test scripts in HPE ALM is generally avoided as the interface is too awkward to use. At the software development company where I worked, the test scripts were routinely created in Excel and uploaded into Quality Center. This process was seen as much more productive than using the HPE QC interface.

At the bank where I worked, I was responsible for training and supporting the end user testers. I constantly found myself defending the way HPE ALM worked. When executing tests, the users would get themselves lost, would expect an action to have taken place when it had not, had lots of problems logging defects, had problems getting screenshots into a defect, and understanding and using favourites.

The interface they have developed is quite good at the top level, i.e., grouping into Requirements, Test Cases, Test Execution, and Defect Management. However, once you get into each area, the complexity of the application kicks in. There is no 'flow' of the basic functionality. For example, in Requirements, the basic function is to create requirements and link them. There should be a wizard that guides the user through that process, which includes suggestions about grouping and structuring, etc. Instead, you are just left dangling.

Another example: Test cases are to be written or modified, linked, selected for execution, and executed. Test execution in particular is a prime candidate for 'wizard-like' guidance for the tester. A much-clearer indication of where the test execution is up to by test set and test case as well the test steps would be most helpful.

What do I mean by 'flow'? Based on my own application development experience, the basic function(s) of the application should be obvious to the user and the easiest to perform. Extra functionality steps are seen as and executed as digressions from the standard flow. I realize that this is not easy in a product as complex as HPE ALM that has been hacked together by several companies and many developers over the years, which I guess is the reason it is the way it is.

We imported a large number of tests and requirements and found a few 'gotchas' on the way, but generally it filled our needs at the bank that I was working at the time.

I used HPE ALM at the bank for 9-10 months.

We had a number of issues with importing the requirements and test cases we had created in Excel. Mind you, we were using a very complicated setup in Excel.

We only encountered stability issues in the importing from Excel. Things would not go quite as smoothly as expected; quite a few emails back and forth to the local supplier.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

The local supplier Assurity were good.

The local suppliers were very good, but if it was something that had to go back to HPE, forget it.

We were using Excel spreadsheets to try and test a major system change in a bank. Need I say more?

At the bank, the setup took the local supplier over two days to complete. The issues were mostly around meshing into the bank's security and local IT systems.

The vendor was okay. The person sent in to do the installation was very knowledgeable on the product.

It is totally over-priced.

I did not evaluate other options. The system was picked by the QA manager at the time, based on his experience with the product.

I think it is over-priced and would recommend looking carefully at other options.

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.

• Test Plan
• Test Execution
• Defects tab
• Mapping tests to requirements
• Reporting

The reports we can generate are better.

The performance needs work, as over the past couple years, where I have worked with large companies, I noticed slower response times.

I have used HP ALM and Quality Center and TestDirector for 18 years.

There were some issues.

It is stable in its functionality, but there is some slowness with its performance.

It seems to function with very large companies, but sometimes there seems to be a slower response time, and it could be an internal network issue within the company, but I'm not sure.

I have not had to work with the customer service.

We planned on using the solution for defect testing but it was a low priority for us, we never got around to it.

So far in the way we use the product, it has slowed down our process.

I have not thought about it. Though, I think the tools might be effective if we could utilize them better.

The tools could be useful if we were utilizing them more effectively. There is not a standard way of using the tools and I think that if there was, we would benefit. The tools are also too complex.

If they could improve their BPT business components that would be good to include in the next release. The current one does not seem complete. It is not really user friendly and it is difficult to handle test speeds. Even though the product supports a range of configurations they are difficult to set up and we preferred a different configuration.

I have been using ALM Quality Center for 1 year.

I think the only issue we were getting was with the memory. Our database was getting bigger and bigger so we need to increase the memory for the database to alleviate the issue.

In regard to scalability, I think it is scalable. In our team, we have more than 100, as for the other teams, I am not sure.

The tools might be good but the way we were utilized them was not effective. People have different ways to use the tools and we did not have a standard or conventional way. It would have been more beneficial if everybody followed a set of standards. Making the tools less complex would be better.

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

The ability to show end-to-end tractability between requirements, tests, defects, and also reporting.

Allows us to have a single source of truth for our test efforts.

The reporting could be a little more robust.

I have used this version since June 2015. However, I have used this product since 1999, when it was Test Director 6.0.

Very infrequently.

Not so far, no.

A seven out of 10.

No. We have used Quality Center/ALM since I joined this organization.

A little complex as it pertains to migrating databases, then manually linking them back up to the file repositories.

In my current role, I don't advise anyone about pricing and licensing for this product.

This product was already in-house when I joined my company.

If you go the on-premise route, make sure your system architects and DBAs thoroughly review the installation/upgrade guide. I would also advise establishing a "center of excellence" department which can help build template projects and enforce standards so the users are all using similarly configured projects.

It gives me the ease of putting together the requirements, test cases, the release test schedules, and executing the test. It can generate the reports for each and every release that we need, and it's quick and easy enough to generate reports.

We have multiple teams across the globe where we have multiple projects set up in ALM. One project is used by our team in Israel and our other project is used by a team in Atlanta. We have a centralized control or multiple projects going across the globe. So that's a good benefit for us.

We actually use Performance Center, too. Where what we need is: When we run any test to the Performance Center, the results are stored in ALM, too. But what happens instead, the results show a summary report in HTML or a .zip file. But if there was a way in the test lab for ALM, after running any Performance Center test, that the the results could be published in the test lab itself instead of going and opening the particular result (if it shows all the response time and whatever transactional data that we have) in the ALM lab itself, that would be beneficial for us.

Also, on and off, we have had some issues with the operation itself where the operation is not able to run the test or something. We have to go back and forth with the vendor and HPE (now Micro Focus) to get this resolved.

For the last 10 years.

For ALM, we didn't have any specific downtime crashes, but we have had some issues with the database connection. The internal database where we put in the ALM data might crash or the database connection is lost. That's where we noticed some issues.

Whatever version of ALM that we have, it is more than enough for what we have right now. In terms of scaling, I can say it will go beyond four to five years from now.

For any of the operators, the support is extremely useful. It's great, actually. They are always available on-time.

It's straightforward to operate, but you actually need to get involved with the concerning vendors when you need their support.

We cannot just go download anything from online and put it. We need some support from the concerning team to make sure everything is right.

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.

The most valuable feature is the Quality Center itself. It's a test management tool; so it enables us to manage and track tests, record the effects, and give us full traceability. It enables us to record what's happened and to have full traceability throughout the testing process.

It provides us with a central place for all our tests and all our test results.

The stability is very good.

The scalability is very good.

Technical support can be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes the support has been very good. At other times, the wait has been a bit long to get a response.

We were previously just recording all our test evidence in Word documents. So we needed a test center.

Make sure that you set it up correctly, and make sure you use the full range of tools in it. It will provide you with enough information for you to produce reports and get a full understanding from what you have done.

Our most important criteria when we choose a solution are reliability and scalability.