OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

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.

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.

I'm the admin for our organization's Quality Center. I define the guidelines and projects for use. We use also use it for management requirement testing. Though, we are not doing automated tests or defect management right now. 

We can't use the Quality Center for everything because the login is only about the user ID and password. Because of this, we are not using the data in Quality Center for all projects.

It is quite complicated because I have about 200 projects, mostly SAP, and all of them have to work in the same way. I do a lot of reporting and everything has to be more or less the same.

I love to use this solution with single projects. It has helped our productivity. With the metrics that I receive, I can put them onto the management model so I can see them there. It has reduced our time for project management and controls by 20 percent.

We do a risk-based testing in some parts of tests, especially because the applications are very big so they can't test everything. The control of incidents is normally very good, as they don't want critical defects when we do this.

The requirements are the best thing.

The management feature is very important. I also use requirements, tests, and defects.

While I'm using a lot of the business reports, these are very complicated.

It is hard to find the traceability from a defect to a requirement. Sometimes, it is very hard to find the evidence in an executed test case. While it's possible, it could be easier. Only these two things have to be improved: the tracking from a defect to requirement and the evidence of testing.

Quality Center's ability to connect all the different projects to reflect status and progress is quite complicated. We may develop something because there are so many projects. Right now, I have to do something which Quality Center is really not designed for: over reporting. This is a very big problem right now. We may develop some controls, but it is problem at the moment. I love Quality Center for individual projects to work with it. However, if you have a lot of projects for Quality Manager to do cross reporting on many projects, then it's almost impossible. It takes a lot of time. 

I have used it for 10 years.

With my current company, I started to set up their solution two and a half years ago. It has taken that long to get the solution working because it is a big project.

The stability is okay.

All users have to report their projects in Quality Center. Previously, it was voluntary to use Quality Center. From September, everybody has to use it in the company.

We have 300 users currently utilizing the solution. This number should increase to 500 or 600 going forward.

I don't work with the support of the Quality Center.

I haven't had a lot of contact with Micro Focus to know what they are doing.

Previously, we had no application lifecycle management tool, so there was a lack of coordination about requirements and no traceability regarding which requirements had been tested. Sometimes, defects were being reported by email. Now, everything works well, which is a huge improvement for my company.

It is very intuitive and wasn't complex for me. I like to work with it, but there are a lot of new users, and it's very complex for them to understand using Quality Center in the beginning.

We jumped right in and didn't have an implementation strategy.

We had a lot of problems with the new installation.

The implementation team was all internal: two other people and myself.

I started with the testing. Then, after the launch, I was working with the requirements and defects. Therefore, the deployment was a step-by-step process for quite a long time.

Pricing is managed by our headquarters. I am able to get from them for very cheap. The market price is horribly expensive.

I have seen other applications, and I like this application more. We tried SHIELD, Xray, and Confluence. I have also looked at another solution which was more about integrity. However, I am more concerned about requirements management. Other solutions working with integrity and enterprise architect can be very complicated. Though, SHIELD, as a solution, is too simple.

Very quickly, you can work with the solution. Though, there are user in my company in which this solution seems very complex. I would recommend that users take the courses offered to them. In addition to getting the manual, reading, and learning it, users have to try the solution, e.g., I create a playground for them to try out the solution for a few hours. Here they can try out the requirements and play with it. 

If you think logically and practically when using the solution, it works fine.

From the start, visualize the application. The initial tree on how to start is very important.

We would like to implement Single Sign-On, but there is a problem with it in my company. All different solutions have to be signed on individually in our company. Right now, we are trying to work with Oktana, but Oktana won't go into production in our company if there isn't a possibility of another login.

In the last release, there was nothing really new nor useful.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10).

It gives us a solution where we can keep everything centralized like our test scripts, test data, and our projects. It doesn't matter who is creating the project, everybody can access and execute it. Both our onsite and offshore teams working from different locations are able to benefit from this solution. That's the beauty of it.

When we implemented this solution, we chose to virtualize, so we didn't implement any physical hardware. We're able to scale very quickly for very large projects when we need to run 5,000 user simulations. Afterwards, we can also scale down quickly. This gives us a lot of flexibility in our project executions.

The web client doesn't match the quality of the rest of the features of this solution. HP needs to improve it.

There are some challenges we faced during the deployment. But, we've had no major issues.

We've used versions 11, 12, 12.2, and now, 12.53. They've been very stable in our environment.

We're able to scale up and down as needed. It has great flexibility when it comes to scaling.

There are challenges related to the network security during the set up. But, once you figure it out, solution is relatively easy.

We have done the implementation in-house.

While comparing to the previous solution, this solution gave us as much as 60% cost savings.

Before you start implementing, make a solid plan and try to figure out the challenges before hand.

I use the solution in my company for test management. In our company, we were creating and mapping our requirements with the scenarios. The tool is used to map defects with test cases for the traceability part. My company has made use of the complete application.

The tool's most valuable feature is that it is user-friendly, and everybody can learn to use it easily.

Recently, I faced some issues while using the product on Mac-based machines, as I was unable to upload test cases. The aforementioned feature is not available with the tool. I asked the management to provide a Windows-based machine to upload different tests.

I have been using OpenText ALM / Quality Center for three to four years. I am a user of the tool.

It is a stable solution.

Our company's customers had multiple teams, of which some operated from remote sites or the offshore side. In general, there are around 30 people using the product.

I have not contacted the tool's support team. My company's support team members had contacted the tool's technical team to help deal with the product's issue with Mac-based machines.

I haven't done anything regarding the installation since our company's clients manage it.

My company has only installed the product on our client's local machine, which was easy since the support team members assisted us. Everything was clearly mentioned on the tool's website.

The solution is deployed on the client servers.

I feel that the product is a good test management tool. I feel that everyone needs to use the application.

The deficit management capability has impacted the productive quality, and I feel it is a good feature. My company has used the tool to map the test cases. My company can find out which test cases are impacted by defects.

The reporting and the analytics functionality that the solution provides to users to help them make informed decisions is one of the good parts of the product, especially since it helps create reports and dashboards easily.

OpenText ALM / Quality Center is an easy application to use. Anybody who has experience with IT processes and the development side can easily use the product.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We are using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to test the software from the company. Additionally, we do manual and automated tests.

The most valuable feature of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is its support for many automation technologies.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center could improve its marketing. For example, Tricentis is much better at letting the market know about new solutions and updates. The migration of the tool could improve, but it can be difficult.

In a future release, the AI which is implemented in the new version could be marketed better with more details of its capabilities.

I have been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for approximately 15 years.

The stability of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is good.

We have a few hundred people using the solution from project to project.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a scalable solution.

I have contacted the support a few times over the years of using the solution. The support could improve by having more training. I had a difficult time working with their team. The problem the support had was they were not familiar with the things I implemented and the connectors used.

We were using Tricentis and Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to compare which one was better. However, we deployed Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a lot more and at this point, it would be difficult to migrate to a new solution. This is one of the main reasons why we use this solution. However, as a company, we wanted to use the best solution and at this time there is still a debate.

The initial setup of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center depends if you have prior knowledge or how much technical experience the installer has. It is simple if you have some experience. The process is not meant for a non-technical person, such as setting up the infrastructure to build the servers.

The solution is priced high but it is worth the money. We received a return on investment.

The solution is priced high.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is one of the best tools on the market.

I strongly recommend using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to capitalize on the work that is done within the tool for future activities, such as regression testing and training. Unlike working with Excel or Word documents, the work you do in this tool remains accessible and secure, with the option for backups. It's no surprise that many business professionals are using this tool, as it provides a reliable and efficient platform to work on. With a small amount of training and induction in key areas like the test lab and defects module, anyone can work effectively within this tool.

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

We used Micro Focus ALM for the bifurcation process. We have different health associations registering on our portal. We import their data into our channels or segments created by us. So, whenever the users import the data, we require a medium to bifurcate it into different divisions. The solution helps us segment the data.

The most valuable feature is its customer service. They were very helpful. The initial phase of setting up Micro Focus ALM was challenging for us. It took us two or three weeks to set up. During this period, the support team devoted enough time to help us. They scheduled multiple meetings with us. Along with this, it was a straightforward program with all the functions we required from their end.

They should specify every protocol or process with labels or names. Whenever we tried to contact the support team, explaining the problems in our internal sections took a lot of work. While communicating the issues regarding channeling, we had to use very general terms. They needed to be more specific to identify which protocols were working fine and which were not. If they label the protocols better, communication will become much more manageable.

We were using the solution till last June or July. We used it for seven and a half months.

It was a stable solution, and it never crashed. I rate the solution's stability as a nine.

We had a team of 42 people using the solution. The solution is entirely scalable for small enterprises in the C2/C3 stage. I rate the solution's scalability of small enterprises as eight and a half. It might not be a helpful solution for large enterprises considering its cost.

We had to involve their support team whenever we had problems bifurcating data. The team was always there to help.

Positive

Micro Focus ALM is better than IBM or other solutions I have worked with.

The initial setup was easy since the support team was with us. They were always there to support us. Initially, the accuracy rate was meager when we deployed it ourselves. It was doing the wrong bifurcation at times. Thus, improving the accuracy rate took us two to three weeks.

The installation is more of a process than exclusively parting it into stages. In the first stage, we had to configure the setup according to our needs. In the second stage, we had to import our data into it, and the third one was to bifurcate it and make a training model. We used our model before sending and receiving the data directly for confidentiality.

I rate the solution's initial setup as a nine.

We implemented the solution by ourselves. We indigenously built a model for integration. We were a team of seven and an executive, meaning eight members were involved. The team included software developers and product managers.

The ROI is worth it.

It was expensive for us. For the first two weeks, we had to employ people now and then as the system needed to be more accurate. It cost us a lot of money. I rate the solution's pricing as a seven or an eight out of ten.

Our team was able to do a part of the maintenance, and we required the support cell's help with some of the features. The support team is excellent and helpful. 

I recommend Micro Focus ALM if you're looking for a solution that can help you for a small duration in the C2 or C3 stage when you want to grow. But it is wise to avoid hanging around with it for long. The solution is a bit costly, but simultaneously, it is cost-friendly for the organization for a reasonable accuracy rate, preferably above 99%.

I rate the Micro Focus ALM as an eight out of ten.

We used it for multiple platforms in our organization. The IT platform was divided into groups, into towers, and each tower was using it. I used it for multiple towers together. I was managing it for my individual tower. But if there was a roll-out of the regression plan and we needed to see how many would be impacted, we were pulling out the ALM regression part from each and every tower and building it into one.

It's an effective test management tool. When you have to map all the requirements, and need requirement traceability, it reduces test management time. Compared to managing testing in Excel, it reduces it by 50 percent.

Reporting was the main thing because, at my level, I was looking for a picture of exactly what the coverage was, which areas were tested, and where the gaps were. The reporting also allowed me to see test planning and test cases across the landscape.

I was managing multiple landscapes. We were adding requirements in ALM itself and then mapping those requirements across the landscape. If one requirement was distributed across a project, it was mapped with ALM so that we could trace this particular requirement and see what projects were impacted and what test cases were tested regarding it. ALM provided complete traceability.

In terms of the solution's security features and compliance, I didn't come across any concerns. I checked the ALM SaaS version for the project I'm working on in my current organization as well, and I haven't felt there are any security concerns regarding ALM.

I used ALM Quality Center in roles from test manager to test director and it was the best tool in each role. It was easy to handle, and we could map everything, starting from requirements, and see everything with the test reports. It's a tool for everyone, and one which is very easy for everyone to adopt. Creating test plans, doing test setup, and set up of folders was very easy. The tool was quite flexible. It might take a maximum of one day to set up a whole project. 

I never faced any issues in integrating this test management tool with other tools for test automation. I worked with UFT and another in-house tool as well. We were able to manage and we were able to connect the applications very easily. The auto-run options were pretty good.

When it came to JIRA and Agile adoption, that was not really easy to do with ALM. I tried, but I was not able to do much on that. So for Agile, I've never used it and I'm not sure how good it is. There is room for improvement in the way it connects to and handles Agile projects. When I was trying to manage both Agile and projects with ALM, I had to pick up my defects and reinsert them in ALM. There was no integration that I was able to find for that, although that was about a year ago.

I have used Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for seven to eight years.

The stability is quite good. Their upgrades are quite good. There are formal updates. I was happy with that.

It was utilized, effectively, across the landscape, across our technologies, and across projects. It was widely used.

My previous company was a pretty big organization and had 200 to 300 users of the solution. It was purely for the technical teams, for people like architects, testers, project managers, and test managers. We distributed it with the access required by each. The defect managers and architects only had traceability. The testing teams had full access. Test manager had planning and reporting access.

When you have to ramp up your licenses and you have to scale it up, it's quite a costly product. You have to keep an eye on how many people are using it. You can't just give access to users who are only there to take on excess work and who are not using it. It is not a very economical solution.

At that time, I was also looking at JIRA, participating in a comparison between ALM and JIRA. What I was looking at was how effective JIRA is for test management versus ALM.