OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

I primarily use the models from Quality Center. The requirements, the plan, lab, and effects, et cetera. I use it to merge my entire cycle of debts.

One feature that is very nice that our team uses a lot is the Excel add-in. It's a tool with add-ins, extra models, that you can use to export and import data from Excel, Microsoft Excel. It's been extremely useful for us.

The solution overall is very good and very solid. It's robust.

The stability is very good.

In the world of agile, the solution needs to make testing better. They need to arrange their tests with a very high speed of tests. Quality Center is a little bit old in terms of approach. It needs to be modernized. I have to go through many cycles, et cetera, in order to register everything correctly. I need more flexibility to adapt to the new methodology of agile for Excel. That will require more speed. Currently, due to the relative slowness, takes a lot of time to use the tools very well. 

If the solution could create a lighter, more flexible tool with more adaptability to new methodologies such as agile, it would be great.

I was in contact with my support team here, and there is a new release of Quality Center for agile. That is called Quality Center Octane. However, my support team has not made it available to me yet. I was waiting to see the new version of Quality Center Octane, to see if it would have more flexibility in agile. 

I've been using the solution for about ten years now. It's been a decade. It's been a long time.

The stability is very good. It has very good capabilities. It is 99.99% stable. We haven't had issues with bugs and glitches. It doesn't crash and freeze. It's good.

The scalability of the solution is very good. If a company needs to expand it, it can.

We have about 1,000 users on the solution.

Technical support is a black box. It's not good. When I look into things on the site, it's very difficult to find the information and help I need. On a scale from one to ten, I'd say it is a five.

We tend to get support from offices based in America, and we are in Brazil. It's my understanding that there isn't a team here in Brazil. Central support may be in Honduras. I've only gotten through one time. 

They need to do better. We aren't satisfied with the level of service or the process that has to happen before we can get help.

I'm not sure how easy or difficult the initial setup is. I don't know due to the fact that the setup is done by a support team and I am on the side of the user. To set up and maintain the tools on the server is not my job. I also do not know how long it takes to deploy the product. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to comment on it effectively.

That said, to install a new station on the client-side, not the server side, is very quick.

My company is just an end-user and customer. We aren't a reseller or partner.

I'm using a variation of version 12. It may be version 12.3.

If you have a large enterprise like me (I work in a bank and there are 10,000 people who work here) and have a large setup, this solution is very solid. For a minor company that is a smaller startup of maybe 10 or 20 people, it's a good idea to use another tool that is more flexible. 

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We're primarily using the solution as a testing tool where we're recording our testing data. Our use cases vary, however. Right now, for example, we're merging two companies together. When we are doing that, we have various test cycles and we have gone through three test cycles so far. aNow we're heading into UAT. So we're testing all aspects of the business, including HR, operations, gas, and electric generation. We're doing pretty much our stand-alone tests, or unit testing. Then we will then go into our end-to-end testing where all of the systems are working together. After that is done, we'll be heading into more of our business testing, our UAT.

The ability to really deeply analyze everything down to individual users has been very useful for the organization as a whole.

Most of the features that I like the best are more on the analytics side. We are generating our analytics from the execution module. After your tests are executed, we're able to generate all of our analysis for our presentations and to present findings to leadership. There are a lot of different views that you have access to. You can show your pass rate, your fail rate, etc. You can pretty much drill it down all the way to what each tester is doing. That's one of the really good features that they have at ALM.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The solution is very easy to use, even right out of the box. You don't need to do a lot of configurations.

You can create roles and assign various rights to each of the roles per project. You can really customize the product.

The uploading of test scripts can get a little cumbersome and that is a very sensitive task. They could improve on that a lot. It's really important that this gets better as I'm loading close to a thousand test scripts per cycle.

I've been using the solution for about three years at this point. It's been a while.

The solution is extremely stable. We really have not had any issues even after upgrading and taking the whole system down. It's very user-friendly right out of the box. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution can scale well. If we need to add different modules to it, it has the ability to expand. You do need licensing for that. However, the out-of-the-box features included in the solution are great.

We haven't really scaled it just yet. We have about 250-300 users right now. They are largely tester, developers, admin and project managers.

Technical support so far has been great. I've found that we can tell them about an issue, and they're usually back to us within the same day with a solution. We're quite satisfied with the level of service provided. I'd rate them ten out of ten.

This is the only solution I have ever used. I don't know if the company worked with something else previously.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. It's easy. We didn't face any difficulties at all. I wouldn't describe the process as complex.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with ALM.

If you want a good tool that is robust and is very user-friendly and capable of supporting a program with multiple streams or multiple workstreams, ALM would be the perfect tool. It can basically track all of your testing. It also allows you to collaborate with all of your testers, stakeholders, etc. 

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten due to the fact that it's user-friendly, and it has the ability to track various projects or various workstreams of a program. Also, the test scripts are reusable. For example, let's say if we are going to utilize those same test scripts for another project, a couple of years down the line, they are available, and you can do real-time updates within ALM. That's really helpful.

We use it for managing requirements, testing, and defects.

What they do best is test management. That's their strong point.

HP-QC does not support Agile. It is designed for Waterfall. This is the number one issue that we're facing right now, which is why we want to look for another tool.

We're a pharmaceutical services company, so we require electronic signatures in a tool, but this functionality isn't available in HP-QC. We don't have 21 CFR, Part 11, electronic signatures, and we need compliant electronic signatures.

Some of the ALM tools can toggle between tabular format and document format for requirements, but the same feature is not available in this solution. There is also no concept of base-lining or versioning. It doesn't exist.

I have been using this solution since 2010.

It is glitching now. We have an older version, and it doesn't work well with the latest version of Windows. It hangs a lot.

It is pretty easy to ask for additional memory. It is implemented in Azure, so we can just ask for additional space.

We have concurrent licenses. If we count the number of users, we have around 350 users. They use it on a daily basis.

Our license was procured through SAP. It was indirectly purchased, so it is very difficult to contact the technical team. We have to go through SAP to get feedback on our issues. Support is difficult, not very friendly, just because we have an indirect relationship with Micro Focus.

This is the first one that our company used.

It was simple enough. It did not take much time. The first time we used it only for testing. When we used it for requirements management, it was a little bit more difficult, and we had to re-train our users on how to use the tool.

The tool was simple enough to learn by using the manuals. I learned how to configure the tool, and I conducted the company-wide training. I maintain and configure the system.

It is very expensive as compared to other tools. We didn't get their premier version. It is a lesser version, and to upgrade, there will be an additional cost for us. 

I would recommend others to find another tool because the interface itself is very outdated. It looks very '90s. There are a lot of better, cheaper tools out there. That's all I can say.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center a five out of ten. It must have version control and electronic signatures.

We use this solution for test management purposes. For sorting set cases, testing for possible defects, executions, and so on.

Defect management is very good. It's not a lightweight solution, you can do a lot of customization with respect to the workflow. It also definitely supports the waterfall model.

Only Internet Explorer is supported. That is a big problem. They don't support Chrome and Firefox and so on.

The browser limitation is the biggest problem —  nobody wants to use IE in this world.

The browser issue is a big deal because it doesn't work on Mac. That's a game-changer, but now, I assume they have come up with a giant tool, ALM Octane.

It would be great if they brought the waterfall model with ALM Octane, or created a new interface as such. 

I have been using ALM for roughly 10 years.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very stable solution.

The technology itself is a little outdated — previous generation technology. Patching and other things can be a little difficult. 

It's also very scalable.

Regarding technical support, one word comes to mind: terrible.

I don't expect everybody to know everything, but there have been instances when I had to tell them the answer and they'll tell it back to me; however, of course, there are some knowledgeable people working there too. Sometimes it's very good, sometimes it's very bad — there is no in-between.

The initial setup was a little complex. For example, compared to installing Oracle applications, ALM is straightforward and easy.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is very expensive. Personally, I think that it's too expensive, but I don't have another tool to compare it to.

For anyone who supports the waterfall model, this is a great tool. I would not say that it's not a good tool. It is a great tool for managing processes and tests. It's very stable, but you will see some glitches here and there — that's inevitable. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give ALM a rating of seven.

We are a consultancy. We use ALM Quality Center for handling waterfall type projects. If our clients are taking an agile approach, then we talk to them about Octane, which is the agile solution.

It has a brand new look and feel. It comes with a new dashboard that looks nice, and you can see exactly what you have been working with.

It is pricey.

I have been using this solution for at least 20 years.

It has been very stable. There was only one minor issue that a customer just stumbled upon. It really wasn't that big of a problem. It was something that was introduced in version 15.01 patch 2 but doesn't appear in version 15.5. It is something that they added to the product or fixed with the product, but the issue is back again.

It is scalable. You can have thousands of users running this product at the same time. 

We are a small consultancy, but we have customers who are running hundreds of thousands of users concurrently with the product and have no problems with it. They are running them on a worldwide basis.

Tech support is pretty good overall. There was a time when it wasn't all that great, but it is pretty good right now. It has vastly improved over what it was probably five years ago.

Ours is strictly partnership, so we haven't dealt with any other ALM type of products from other vendors.

It is fairly straightforward to set up. I didn't have any problems with it.

I don't know the exact numbers, but I know it is pricey. When we talked to the sales reps we work with from our company, they say, "Well, Micro Focus will never lose on price." So, they are willing to do a lot of negotiating if it is required.

You need to take a look at what you're doing right now and how your test requirements, defects, and so forth are organized. If you can, try to bring them under one umbrella. ALM Quality Center does all of those things. In the past, I found a lot of customers using a variety of tools to do these different things. One for requirements management, one for defects management, one for testing, and so forth. It is much easier if you can bring everything under the same umbrella, that is, ALM Quality Center.

ALM Quality Center is geared towards waterfall type projects, and a lot of customers are moving away from that right now. Octane is a solution for the agile model. In ALM Quality Center, we have what's called a test lab and a test plan so that you can organize your tests. The same capability is not there in Octane. It would be nice to bring that feature over into Octane so that we can easily see what are the tests and organize the tests any way we want.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center an eight out of ten.

It is a test management tool where you write the test plan, test scripts, and test cases. You can log the defects that you found during the testing. You can also use it with other integrations, such as automation using UFT, where you execute the scripts from Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. We are using the latest version of this solution.

You can maintain your test cases and requirements. You can also log the defects in it and make the traceability metrics out of it. There are all sorts of things you can do in this.

It is not that complex to use. In terms of user experience, it is very simple to adopt. It is a good product.

The Agile methodology is now being used across all the organizations, but in this solution, we don't have a dashboard like Jira. In Jira, you can move your product backlogs from one space to another and see the progress, that is, whether a backlog is in the development stage or testing stage. Micro Focus ALM Quality Center does not have this feature. It is typically very straightforward. You just execute the test cases from it, and you just make them pass, fail, or whatever. They can also improve its integration with Jira.

The browser support needs to be improved in this because it supports only Internet Explorer as of now. It does not have support for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or any other browser. 

There are also some performance issues in it. Let's say that you are doing the testing, and you found something and are logging the defect. When you try to attach several or multiple screenshots with the defect, it slows down, which is a very common problem people face.

I would like them to include a functionality where I am able to see the reports across all the projects. When you have multiple projects, being a manager, I would like to see the reports across all the projects. Currently, there is no single sign-on through which we can get all the information at one place. You need to log into it project-wise. If you have ten projects, you can't view the information in one dashboard.

I have been using this solution for more than 12 years.

It is a very stable product. It is a very old product.

Whenever I face any issue or require an item for automation, such as for integrating Excel support, I can get it in the resource library. It has a resource library where you can get all of the stuff.

I don't have any direct contact with Micro Focus support. For any issues that I face while using the product, we have a ticketing system in my company. I just need to log the ticket, and the right person will resolve it. They might be contacting Micro Focus.

The initial setup is pretty simple.

I would highly recommend this product because it is a very stable product. Around 70% to 80% of organizations are using this product. It is a very stable and popular product.

I would rate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is test management, e.g., test executions using UFT combined with Business Process Testing. We do also requirement traceability, where we pull requirements out of a source system, then we link test cases to those requirements in order to have a coverage matrix.

It empowers us to do more testing. Our testing is being done for customers. 

The solution enables us to conduct risk-based testing. We link this solution to requirements of a certain risk factor. Once it's covered at least one time, it will show us in a report that it has been covered. Most tests are running automatically with UFT, so the check is already there in the automation, and there's no impact to us.

The Test Plan feature is the most valuable because of the test execution.

Security is covered. HTTPS works well. There is also support for LDAP over SSL. Those are the most important security features.

Within Quality Center, you have the dashboard where you can monitor your progress over different entities. You can build your own SQL query segments, and all that data is there in the system, then you can make a dashboard report. That works fine.

Managing multiple projects is possible when you have the full ALM license. However, we have the Quality Center license, which can be managed poorly. This is because you cannot look or report across projects.

We don't use Single Sign-On because this is available from version. Therefore, we do not use it right now. Also, it needs to be tested and we haven't tested it yet. With test automation. If you have Single Sign-On and want to make use of another user, that can be challenging. It is good for normal users to use Single Sign-On. However, it's not really a must at the moment, though it is good that the solution finally supports SSO.

Making Quality Center available to connect to external tools is doable, but it takes some work. With our current version, it is not fit for external entities. Connecting to external entities is easier to work with and report in using the newer versions. However, if you really want to use other tools, I would suggest giving ALM Octane a try.

The defect management module has room for improvement. E.g., for Jira tickets in defect management, they could have a direct link with Jira. However, with Micro Focus Connect, you can set up a link between Jira and Quality Center. 

Requirements management could be improved as the use is very limited. E.g., they have always stated that, "You can monitor and create requirements," but it has its limitations. That's why companies will choose another requirements management solution and import data from that source system into Quality Center. Micro Focus has also invested in an adapter between Dimensions RM and ALM via Micro Focus Connect. However, I see room for improvements in this rather outdated tool. I feel what Micro Focus did is say, "Our strategy is not to improve these parts within the tool itself, but search for supported integrations within our own tool set." This has not been helpful. 

I want to see Atlassian as part of the ALM solution. ALM Quality Center is more from a waterfall approach where Atlassian has already evolved into more of the DevOps and agile part.

I started using Quality Center ALM with version 9.2.

I just engaged with my new customer to do an upgrade. At the moment, it has been stable on all versions of Quality Center. However, I'm quite positive that will room for improvement will be needed shortly after we release the newest version of Quality Center.

Do not wait too long to upgrade. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to upgrade to the latest version with the newest features. Just like buying a car: You do not buy a car, then not go to service.

It is scalable in terms of high availability when you add an additional node because it's licensed for ALM. For Quality Center, this makes it less scalable. However, this is the perception from the vendor that the Quality Center addition is not for big enterprise. It's for a corporation, but not for an enterprise. Normally it's for bigger companies: 2000-plus users with over 1000 projects and domains. Then, they need to scale up with additional nodes, which will make it scalable enough for ALM.

It very much depends on the support engineer that you get. In the past, I've noticed that some really do not know the tool. Sometimes, I challenge first line of support or can come up with a solution faster than the support, but that's because I've also provided technical support for ALM in the past on the behalf of HPE. I know a bit more than the normal user.

Sometimes the support is very good, and sometimes it's a bit poor. E.g., if you go to the second or third of line support engineers, they really know the product. I've also worked with R&D in the past, and that goes beautifully. 

The installation is quite straightforward. Then, the implementation is based on one project, so it cannot go wrong.  This is for a very quick start. You will need more skilled people in your projects for implementation if you want reporting, traceability between requirement tests and defects, and release management. 

I always see ALM as an enterprise solution, so I don't go for the project implementation. You also need to maintain it. If one project has an issue, it may be very different in another project. There's also an issue when you have a user who is working multiple projects. E.g., where does the user have an issue? From a maintenance perspective, project implementation is not very handy so I always try to treat it as an enterprise solution, not as a project solution.

Testing time has decreased for manual execution because tests are being executed with UFT.

ROI is very difficult to say. If you don't test, you don't know how good or poor your quality is, but effective testing always costs money. However, it is very important for your return investment to know the value of your tests. What I've seen until now is that it's not being monitored that much. We have this tool because we need to test and prove the quality of the tests that we have been doing, but there will always be bugs and defects in production.

The solution has the ability to handle a large number of projects and users in an enterprise environment with the correct license.

Most vendors offer the same pricing, though some vendors offer a cheaper price for their cloud/SaaS solution versus their on-premise. However, cloud/SaaS solutions result in a loss of freedom. E.g., if you want to make a change, most of the time it needs to be validated by the vendor, then you're being charged an addition fee. Sometimes, even if you are rejected, you are charged because it's a risk to the entire environment.

With IBM Rational Quality Manager, you need to stick to the rough process and first train your end user versus ALM Quality Center's basic features, which are very easy to understand.

Make sure you have your build requirements and which features are important. Are you running projects for DevOps, agile, etc.? Also, make sure that you can evolve your tooling and not stay on the same tooling for years, knowing that your business users grow faster and have different needs.

Micro Focus does invest enough, but most investments are now going towards ALM Octane. I've seen that they are investing in adapters where you can say, "We're going to migrate from ALM.net to ALM Octane," if not entirely, then partially. There will always be projects in ALM.net, and they will keep maintaining ALM.net because there are many customers on it. Customers do need to realize that IT is changing and that you need to modernize as well.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10), though I would rate it less for DevOp/agile.

We use it as a test management tool where our requirements and everything we need are entered into it and we manage the test cycles. When new products come out, the requirements are gathered and captured. Based on that, the test scripts or test cases are created and uploaded. Eventually, the functional analysts or testers run different test cycles, such as integration, user interface, and user acceptance test cycles. We log the defects with it as well. Based on the metrics, if a product qualifies, it is moved to the next cycle.

We have seen multiple improvements using this solution. One example is that one of our customers wanted to see the defect numbers in the same grid where test execution happens. We were able to provide that. Whenever a defect was raised for a particular test, the defect number updated automatically in an integrated, single view. That meant we could see the status of that step. If it failed, we could see that the defect number had been assigned to that particular step.

We also have a custom tool that we have created to disconnect a user. Sometimes, a user may lock the test scripts and go for a coffee. Usually, a system administrator would have to be there to disconnect that. But we created a solution where test managers or test leads have an option to use the username and kill the session so that other users can log in and start working. This is one  of the best-practices we have implemented so that the time involved in test execution will be reduced. There are a lot of dollar savings when executing each cycle.

Overall, it has absolutely reduced the time it takes to do testing. Initially it might be very difficult for the users to execute and then update the test script status and the defects. But after two or three days, they are used to the navigation and it can save a lot of time. If we were using Excel or doing things manually, they would need to store the details and pass them on via shared drives. That approach would also make consolidation very difficult and a person would have to collect data to create a report. ALM is an integrated tool from which we can get reports.

The most valuable feature is the Test Lab, when compared to any other tool.

With test execution, you have an option to create custom fields. It is also really user-friendly. With other tools, we only have restricted fields and we cannot customize or add new columns or fields that users can make use of while testing. ALM is very flexible for creating new fields. It is easy for users to understand the application.

It is also pretty easy when managing multiple projects. We can actually create the domains in the tool, and under the domains we can create a project. Based on that, we can manage things very well without any confusion for the users. They can log in based on the domains and select their respective projects. Most of the equivalent test management tools don't have that option.

The solution is also really secure. It will only open within our network. And in the next version it has access roles and a single sign-on feature where users don't need to log in physically with their usernames and passwords. It automatically takes the authentication and goes. That is a very good feature because we can log in to the laptop and it goes automatically, making it very secure. Because in our version, 12.55, we don't have SSO enabled, we are doing a PoC of version 15, which has this feature.

We cannot rearrange the Grid in the Test Lab. It is in alphabetical order right now. But sometimes a user will want to see, for example, the X column next to the B column. If they came out with that it would be useful for us. They are working on that, as we have raised that request with Micro Focus. They have not given any definite dates, as there are multiple requests from different companies, but they are working on it. We have 14 or 15 of our own columns. So every time they want to validate details of, say, SAP security or something along those lines, they need to drag to the right. They wouldn't need to do that if there were an option to reshuffle and save the view.

I would also like to see them provide a better reporting structure. They have a Business Views Microsoft Excel Add-in that appears as an additional tab in MS Excel. If they could improve that a little more, integrating it better with Excel, it would be very useful for all the stakeholders, helping them see the reports.

I have been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for the last six years.

It's very reliable. It is a mature application. It's very rare that there is a crash.

The scalability is very good. 

We use it for most of the projects in our organization, with the exception being small projects. Currently, there are no plans for increasing usage.

Their technical support is very helpful. They provide support 24/7 and they have resolved whatever issues have come up, on time.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I have been here for six or seven releases, new versions, and their installations. It is a straightforward process. It is not that complex, but we have needed the assistance of Micro Focus at times.

We have dedicated staff for deployment and maintenance of this solution. There are seven of us in the company working with Quality Center. One is a technical admin leader who takes care of Quality Center, and another is a project leader. Under them are project support people who work in shifts, 24/7, and create projects and provide support for users' technical issues.

Pricing is not my area, but in general, what I've seen when reading articles is that it is costly. That is the reason most customers are moving to the other solutions, which are much cheaper. That is the opinion of people I have spoken to in other companies.

Quality Center is a mature test management tool, which is used across the industry and, for the Waterfall model, it is the best solution. JIRA is good for Agile testing. Micro Focus has released Octane, but it is costly compared to other solutions, so companies are not opting for it. JIRA has a low licensing cost.

I've worked with multiple tools, when it comes to a Waterfall model of testing, and ALM is the best tool.

The solution enables us to conduct risk based testing but, as a test manager, that kind of testing is only done when there is not enough time for testing the entire solution. That is when we go through the requirements in the ALM Requirements module and see what the most important requirements are that should be tested. Based on that, we mark it as risk-based testing. We create a column and check it as "yes" or "no". Based on that information, it can be filtered and the same test cases will be handed to the Test Lab for testing. That means that the most critical functionality of the solution will be covered. The solution helps segregate, using the requirements, to test scripts.

Micro Focus is investing in the product. It is really good that they are investing in it and that they are releasing new releases. The newest release, currently, is 15, where there are multiple new features. It is useful for our users and, as a company, enterprise-wise, that they further improve the solution.