OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

All features have their own value, but the most valuable ones are--

• Customizations
• SAP Solution Manager integration
• Test set building

Change Management integration - The ability to create change documents on Solution Manager linked to an event and to change its status according to ALM status or to customize it. This is new and I've only used it on one project so far.

Business Process Change Analyzer (BPCA) - It can analyze objects on SAP transport requests to create a Test Set according to scenarios created. Also, because ALM is integrated with blueprints that generate requirements that are converted into a test scenario to validate the changes, it checks if those changes will cause an impact on the selected business process.

Manage Regression Testing and Integrated Test - It's the most important and most popular feature for all the projects I have worked on.

I've been using it for five years, and currently use it alongside HP ALM v11.52.

We had problems with Solution Manager/SAP integration and use through customizing RFC calls.

Not with the tool. Usually problems happens because of a network delay or instability.

An HP expertise team was put together for implementation if needed, but there was no need for them.

10/10

10/10.

I had already used IBM Rational, which is good too, but the HP tool is more complete.

It was done in-house. The team that works here has experience with HP Quality Center and ALM on other projects. The team expertise is high.

Depends on how much you pay for this product and the size of the project. For a big project, it's a great tool that will help a lot.

Use all that his product can offer as there is no need to buy others that can do the same tasks that HP Quality Center does. It's a complete tool that you can customize according to business/IT/user needs.

• Ability to hierarchically group test cases
• Ability to reuse test cases (call test from a test)
• Ability to organise under trees test sets
• Ability to monitor everything
• Create a report under everything
• Ability to configure custom attributes on all modules

• Allows us to allocate tests among multiple test members
• Provides us with live metrics and control
• Provides an audit of progress and issue
• Given us the ability to maintain decently a regression pool of test cases

It needs compatibility with browsers other than IE.

I've used it for more than eight years.

Sometimes it has tricky errors, but rarely.

Sometimes, it has performance issues at some points, but this all depends on a million different things.

It is a very close community, and luckily there are a lot of posts.

I've not had any direct contact with them.

No previous solution was used.

We've never calculated it.

This is for big software houses, so costs and especially yearly renewal of support is very very expensive.

No other options were evaluated.

Be organised, as the tool has the abilities to support this.

• Requirements
• Test Plan/Lab 
• Defects
• The sprinter is a great feature in the manual runner.
• Reporting
• Analysis
• Version Control
• Exporting and Importing
• Document Generator
• Defects Synchronization to other tools like Borland StarTeam and JIRA, for example

Accessibility! The reason I gave it a 9 not 10, is that I doesn’t support Apple machines or any browsers other than IE, and even then, later than IE 10! This is a big problem if the development team who should be working on defects are using Apple machines, which is very common. This is also a big problem for us if higher management wants to take a look on defects for one reason or the other. They are usually on the run and can’t access it using their iPads, for example.

This is a problem that JIRA solved, and it's now practically accessible from any browser on any type of operating system, and can be opened on a cellphone/tablet browser or through mobile applications. It’s perfect when it comes to accessibility and this is what Quality Center desperately needs.

I have been using it for more than six years.

Performance issues are very common. The degradation of performance and consequent failures continuously happen. “Failed to Login” errors are common as well, and some random issues like creating the issue twice and deleting one deletes the other, etc.

No issues encountered.

It's the perfect tool for testing purposes, but you need to consider other options if development teams do not use the environments supported by Quality Center.

• Requirements module
• Test Plan/Case module
• Defect module
• Reporting modules
• API

• Real-time snapshot of project vitals
• Reusability of requirements
• Tests
• Flexibility in assigning multiple testers to a project, rather than assigning each tester to a test case
• Seamless on the fly reorganise test projects due to corporate emergencies and shifting priorities

• Traceability and version control management
• Not able to group project deliverables by builds

I've used it for six years.

When we were installing v10, the installation became corrupted. So when we upgraded to v11, it was very expensive, and at our own cost, to do. This was regardless of our maintenance contract with HP.

No issues encountered.

Our vendor is 10/10, but HP is 7/10.

Our vendor is 10/10, but HP is 8/10.

No previous solution was used.

The installation tools are not the best, even for experienced IT/admin, it self-corrupts, and there is no good tech support to help with install issues unless you pay them to fly in a team.

We did it in-house.

It's 300%.

It depends on your vendor. SkyIt was the best, as they were able to get the initial cost low enough so a small startup could afford it.

• IBM
• JIRA/Test Link

For small companies where audits/lawsuits etc. are not a factor, it's not worth the investment. You should use open source or lower cost alternatives (JIRA project/defect tracking, Test Link open source QC like Test Tool). However, for any company that wants a mature, highly developed platform that is constantly improving, need to survive audits, etc., you must consider HP ALM solutions such as HP Quality Center.

• Test case creation
• Test case execution
• Base lining
• Requirements

It is useful in test-case maintenance as it helps with traceability.

I used it for two years.

Not that I am aware of.

The stability of the product is good.

No issues encountered.

I had little to no interaction with customer service.

It's good.

We figured out HP ALM is good and switched from using Excel spreadsheets.

It's straightforward. The user guide provides detailed steps on installation.

We used an in-house team to implement.

We also looked at MTM – Microsoft Test Manager.

If the company plans to use QTP/UFT then HP QC/ALM is a great option. UFT integrates with ALM and we can run test cases remotely.

The ability to keep test cases and defects centrally located, accessible to multiple people instead of in document format, is the most valuable feature.

We no longer need to use documents for test cases, which are brittle and difficult to keep updated.

• The UI is primitive
• The tool is hard to learn
• The help files are minimal, even the videos
• The massive configuration options are too broad, meaning there is little in common across deployments

I've used it for a few months, but I also have experience with Quality Center, the predecessor.

I wasn't involved in the deployment.

The site has to be reloaded every time there is a change in the background.

No issues encountered.

It was complex, as I was not given permission to delete items, for example. Trying to create test cases via copy-and-paste can be cumbersome, and it was easy to misread the directory structure or put cases in the wrong location.

I believe that the tool is probably not worth great expense, although it is better than remaining tied to documents and spreadsheets.

Try MS Test Manager first, particularly if your code is .Net and/or your developers use Visual Studio.

• Being a large SAP shop, having the ability to track individual issues to a defined release is a key function.
• We also use the tool for our performance testing and automation efforts, including the test library repository. These functions within the tool are easy to use and allow our internal user community simplicity in the needed access to these.
• Scalability is a must with our business and this tool has it.

It has a very large footprint, and takes an inordinate amount of time to load the components and seems to need to do this quite frequently. Also, with many of these tools, there is always room for improvement with the UI in terms of intuitiveness and functionality.

I've used it for five years.

Just the amount of time to install as well as the reinstall frequency.

No issues encountered.

No. Scalability is another key reason for using this tool as mentioned above.

As with any big company, HP support is good but costly.

I have not had to deal with them.

We really started using ALM about five years ago when our testing automation efforts kicked into high gear. Up until then, we were tracking testing using various other smaller tools.

Setup was straightforward once the needed hardware was defined and in place.

It was done in-house.

We have other tools with HP, so it's bundled in with these and hard to measure ROI specifically for one tool.

You need to negotiate with HP.

It's a great tool for a company looking to establish a scalable solution that will give you flexibility as you grow, BUT I would highly suggest you have individual(s) with the expertise to care for and feed it.

• Test Plan
• Test Lab
• Defects
• Requirements
• Dashboard - Reports

• Improved the work quality
• Centralized location for the testing life-cycle
• Traceability and visibility to all the members and stakeholders of projects
• Standardization of test cases
• Test case execution and validation
• Ease of integration with automation tools like QTP, LoadRunner, SOATest etc.

The performance of this product is really poor, and there is no dashboard (reports) for the groups or users on the home page. Also, instead of one database, there are separate ones for each project.

I've used it for three years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

If you add any custom workflow (scripting), then in the long run there will be a deviation in application performance.

It's excellent.

It's excellent, but they don't support scripting unless it's in your PO.

We used JIRA. Its is also a good tool for defect tracking, but due to the lack of test and requirements management in JIRA, we have moved to ALM.

Straightforward. I've gone through the installation admin, and followed the same steps and it was fine.

We did it in-house.

It's a bit costlier when compared to other tools on the market, and you have to haggle with HP for this product.

We also looked at TFS.

Its a good tool for a perfect software development company where release/project roll outs happen on a planned basis. It's not a supportive tool for an agile environment.