OpenText Application Quality Management 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 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 all the major modules in ALM Quality Center. From the releases and management portion, we use the requirements, and we create our releases. We create requirements. We link our test spaces to these requirements and we schedule the execution in the test lab. Then we capture our results in Quality Center and we follow the management process that is not only for manual testing. 

We also have quite extensive automated testing in our environment with some of the other Micro Focus products. They are all integrated into Quality Center, like the UFT, we use service virtualization, we have RPA and we also use Mobile Center. Quality Center plays a major role in our test artifacts, our execution, and our order tracking, both in manual and automated.

Quality Center has improved my organization from a traceability and test coverage point of view. We have multiple vendors providing development to my company, Pick n Pay. If we use automation or Sprinter, the tool documents the steps for us as we follow it to the point that we've got a defect, so it's easy to send that information on to third parties so that they can duplicate the defect on their side and then provide us with a fix. 

The other thing is from a regression point of view, with everything documented in Quality Center, it's easy to go back and execute the same test every time with automation.

Quality Center's ability to connect all related entities to reflect project status and progress is great. This is the tool that we share with all our project managers so that they can see the progress on their projects, even if it's a project across multiple applications or what it is within our environment. We set it up so they can have an overall view of that specific project. It is a great tool to use in that sense.

The test center is our way of working. It's fully integrated, we have a test strategy that supports the use of ALM Quality Center. That's the only way that we track progress on projects. We don't use Excel or anything like that for creating test cases or anything. We also have an environment where we follow a more agile approach and we've integrated Quality Center into JIRA for user stories and defect tracking. If it's not in Quality Center, it's not happening. If it's not documented in Quality Center, we don't believe it.

I wouldn't necessarily say that in the beginning it reduced the time required for testing but if you start on an application and you had the four-quarter full version of that, reusability is automatically built into the tool. Then if you've documented the test case, you've got it. You can reuse that test case in multiple instances of releases at execution. You don't have to go and rewrite it if you plan correctly. If there's a change to something with the way you've structured in Quality Center it will filter through. So it brings our maintenance down by a lot less. Even on the automation side, it brings the maintenance down a lot less with the way we've structured our modules within Quality Center.

It has reduced it by around 15%. That's without automation, it's straight Quality Center. If you add the automation, in some of our areas like the digital area, it brought it down by about 45%. In some of the other areas by around 50%.

Quality Center enables us to conduct risk-based testing. Testing is always a measured approach in our environment. Depending on when development is finished and when we go live, we will do a risk-based approach to say that if we have a look at the critical requirements or test cases, this is how long it will take us. We then get sign-off from the systems analyst, the project manager, and even the business to say, based on the time we have, we're only going to execute critical test cases, for instance.

I'm not 100% sure if Micro Focus is still investing in the product. If I have a look at the features, not 15.01 because we still have to install that, but previously from Quality Center 11 up to where we are now, there are a few things that have been outstanding for a while that I believe will add value. And they're not really getting to that. So I'm not sure what their road map is. Unfortunately this year, the Micro Focus Universe was canceled in the Netherlands, because I'm sure there they would have shared some of the road maps with us, but I don't think the communication on their road map is clear enough to their customers.

The execution module and the test planning module are definitely the most valuable features. We use REST for traceability, but those are the two modules that I cannot live without.

From a test execution point of view or the test lab, from an audit requirement, we have internal and external auditors of the major projects that will do an audit on the project to make sure that we follow the right processes and procedures within the TCOE and within our STLC in Pick n Pay. It's easy to give auditors access to Quality Center as a viewer only and they can view everything we've done from test execution and test planning, as Quality Center keeps the audit trail for us.

In terms of its ability to handle a large number of projects and users in our enterprise environment, we have 17 dedicated testers and automation specialists in the test centers and plus or minus another 35 to 45 business users/developers or systems analysts that access the product. From a scalability point of view, we run multiple projects over multiple domains at any given time with everyone that's got access. Quality Center's ability to send out emails when you log defects makes it possible for someone that works over multiple projects to know exactly where to find the defect if they just follow the emails that go out.

We use Quality Center for all of our reporting purposes. We have dashboards that we've created across domains and projects. With all the information already available in Quality Center, it's quite easy to set up all of our reporting. Work management doesn't necessarily want to go into the details of the projects. It's easy for them to just access the dashboards that we create from information in Quality Center, with direct integration to see that. From a traceability point of view, it is a great product.

In terms of the security features, we don't do the LDEF or the active directory integration. We have a stand-alone solution. We can obviously set our own password. We don't enforce password rules at this stage, but going forward with security becoming more important in the company's life, we are going to follow and going to do the active directory integration. We have single sign-on to Quality Center, as it can handle that integration portion into the rest of the Pick n Pay landscape. We don't use SSO.

Browser support needs improvement. Currently, it can only run on IE, Internet Explorer. It doesn't work on Firefox, doesn't work on Chrome, doesn't work on a Mac. Those are the new technologies where most companies move towards. That's been outstanding for quite a while before it even became Micro Focus tools, when it was still HP. Even before HP, that's always been an issue.

Other smaller things need improvement. If you log a defect, you have the ability to upload attachments, but it will only allow you to add one attachment at a time. If you have ten screenshots, for instance, you have to do it one at a time. You can't go and highlight all ten and upload.

Finally, the biggest problem in our environment, and it's the reason we're not necessarily upgrading our solution every time, is when we do an upgrade or even install a patch, there are always changes to the UI. What it means is that we need to have local admin rights on our machine. The next time we log on, we unload all those components to our machine. Now in an environment like Pick n Pay, where not everyone can have local admin rights, it's quite a mission if we upgrade to go around and get to the 60 to 70 PCs or laptops that are impacted to get the users to log on or get IT support to log in with local admin rights to install the browser portion after an upgrade. There are a few .net downloads that need to happen on the browser side in IE and that takes some time.

I started using this product when it was still called Mercury Interactive, from 1997.

It's on-prem, hosted in a partner that is doing all our hosting. It's on-prem and we do our own administration.

The stability is great. I can't think of any time in the last three years where we had an issue with the product. 

Scalability is great. It doesn't matter what the size of your organization is. If your testing area is 5 users or 500 users, this product can definitely scale. Before I joined Pick n Pay, I worked for a company in Kazakhstan and Russia. We used Quality Center across different countries to roll out a big project and at the end, we had a 400-user license to have everyone following the same process when it came to testing.

We have 17 permanent users in Quality Center. They are testers. We have a test manager role. We have automation engineers. We have test analysts, we have senior testers and we have junior testers. We also have systems analysts that we log defects and assign it to them so that they can access the defects module to validate and update the side of the defect. We also integrate Quality Center with JIRA. We have our third-party development happening, where they use JIRA and we use Quality Center, where we can log the defects in Quality Center then via the integration then send it to JIRA. When they update, we get information back on our side so that we are on the same page. For us, Quality Center is the single tool in our environment. Whatever the status of the defect is in Quality Center, that's the status. Whatever the status is of execution of test cases, that's what it is.

In terms of the required maintenance, I have one system administrator for all the products and they're responsible for Quality Center. They make sure when we plan upgrades to do the upgrades, user management, project creation, and integration with the other Micro Focus tools we use. 

Our adoption rate is about 85-90%. There will always be room to grow.

We don't have plans to increase usage. We have plans to increase other things around Quality Center like test coverage, automation, and all of those things, but not necessarily new licenses or additional licenses. We have a base of licenses in our environment. As we get major projects with more resources, we do a rental on additional licenses for a three or six-month period.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten. 

Their support is quite good. There will always be room for improvement. I also know the local Micro Focus support in South Africa so it's easy for us to pick up the phone and phone the local support or the engineers in South Africa. The only room for improvement will be if you log a call and it's in a different time zone, sometimes there's a delay over three or four hours, but that's literally the only negative about it.

Even within Pick n Pay it is straightforward to do an upgrade. First, uninstall then install the new product or the new version, and if you keep to the same database server, it will pick up all your information and all the projects and everything you have. I've also been involved in areas where we run it via the load balancer and if you follow the documentation, it's quite easy to set up.

An upgrade does not take more than two hours. The initial setup might be a bit longer, about four hours, depending on if you have access to the right database server, if you have all the correct admin rights on the database server, and things like that. If you follow the steps in the installation guide before you start with the install, and you get that right, or get your users set up correctly on the DBA side, it's not a problem. It can take three to four hours.

We do the installation ourselves. I have a product administrator for all of the Micro Focus products in our environment who is doing all the administrative duties for us on all the Micro Focus products.

Regarding our implementation strategy, it becomes quite complex if you use other Micro Focus products as well. It's not as straightforward as just upgrading Quality Center. We use service virtualization and we use Mobile Center. For us, it's important that we follow the process to make sure that we're on the most recent releases of all products that can integrate. The integration portion of the Micro Focus documentation is quite important to us.

We've seen ROI plainly. We can do more projects. It's easier to do the maintenance. It might not be rands or dollars savings, but time-saving is definitely there.

From a pricing point of view, I believe it is an enterprise tool. If you are an enterprise organization and you're using SAP or Oracle for your ERP systems, for example, the cost around Quality Center is not that expensive. From a licensing and planning point of view, you should have a hybrid between licenses you own and depending on how busy you are at certain stages within projects, do additional rentals just for those periods if need be. That's what we do in our environment, we have a base of 15 licenses. If we have any major projects coming in where we know there are additional developers, we do a rental for licenses for the period of that project. We charge that project for the licenses for that rental.

We do have additional costs apart from standard licensing from our side. Pick n Pay outsources their hardware, so obviously we have costs for the hardware and backup for our hardware partners that do our hosting. We see this as a tier-one application in our environment. We have full disaster recovery capability. There some costs involved from that side.

Depending on your environment, the strong point for me with all of the Micro Focus tools is that it supports multiple applications and multiple development languages. It's easy to use one for everything in your environment. If you have a look at automation, if you have SAP and you have mobile, you can use the same tools. It's the same with Quality Center. It doesn't matter what you want to test, you can use the same tool to support that testing. 

Make sure that you plan the detail correctly and plan it to the sense that you know where you want to end up. Otherwise, maintenance becomes a nightmare on your dispatchers.

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

We use it for recording our requirements. We use it for recording our test cases and the data is done within the ALM itself. And, during execution, we use it to update services and to log defects.

The solution reduces testing time, although not in all cases. But it is capable and in some cases, like for web testing, where we are easily able to capture screenshots and videos within the ALM workflow itself, or the test execution steps, it really saves us time. Otherwise, the guys have to keep on capturing screenshots into a file. Here, they can upload  everything in one shot. In that aspect, we have seen some savings in execution and, while they are not that drastic, it does help.

When it comes to the test planning cycle, if I have my regression cases, they could be almost 40 percent of the cases and they are repeated. So instead of uploading them again, I can easily replicate them in ALM. That is one way I am able to save and I would estimate that saves around 25 to 30 percent. The other part is when it comes to the execution steps. The savings are not so drastic but they could be between 5 and 10 percent.

The best thing is that you can see your current status in real time. Our people are deployed mainly offshore, and we have some guys working onsite as well. We have close coordination of the teams using calls. To see real-time updates, you just log in to ALM and you can see exactly what the progress is. You can also see if the plan for the day is being executed properly, and it's all tracked. From the management side, I find those features very valuable.

The ability to connect all related entities and to reflect project status and progress is the main thing that, as a manager, you are able to see: progress in real time. If the guys are updating the status in real time, meaning that as soon as they finish execution they update the status, it is really helpful.

If you ask the testing guys what is most valuable, for them it's like a one-stop, central location for every project, where every artifact and everything else is recorded. It is a single point where you can store everything. It's very easy to track and escalate. The solution does a lot of things which will support you in your project delivery phase.

When it comes to managing multiple projects, as long as everybody is actually recording all the requirements in the Requirements module of the tool, and from there the test cases and test plans — if everybody is doing that — it is really helpful. When we look at the status, we can actually map it to the requirements and we can see which of the requirements have been completed end-to-end, what we're spending, and so on. However, one thing we see is that not everybody uses the Requirements module to log the requirements. For certain projects, people just start using ALM from the time they upload the test cases, during test planning. In such cases, I am not able to see all the information. But for the projects where ALM is being used end-to-end, it is really helpful. The tool itself is really good. It all depends on how you are using it.

In terms of the solution’s ability to handle a large number of projects and users in an enterprise environment, I am sure the solution is capable. Our current usage here is not so large. But I previously worked in companies where around 300 users were using ALM for everything. In that setting, it was a central location where we could see all the results in real time. Here, I handle around six or seven projects simultaneously. But I have seen people who are handling up to 30 or 35 projects simultaneously, all using ALM. I've seen other organizations where people use it completely, for all their projects. There may be different managers, but it is a single location where everything can be tracked. It is scalable and it is pretty user-friendly as well.

In ALM, when you start to execute something, you can record and capture screenshots and videos. Once the team was trained in those features, I could see that they started recording and that they were doing the execution. When they close the last test, the recording is attached automatically. The tool is capable and, again, it comes down to how people are using it. If they are using it in the right way, we are able to capture everything.

ALM only works on Internet Explorer. It doesn't work on any other browser. In my opinion, Internet Explorer is generally a bit slower. I would like to see it work on Chrome or on other browsers. We have other applications that work perfectly fine with Chrome. It is not a major problem, but browser compatibility is an issue. And if you're using a Mac, it doesn't work.

We have a digital platform and we have done a lot of automation using Selenium there. Those tools have the ability to work in Chrome. But I am not able to integrate ALM completely, end-to-end. For example, using the automation tools we have to initiate test execution from ALM and then take all the results and upload them back. So I'm not able to work end-to-end because of the browser compatibility issues.

The majority of our guys are working on Windows and they have IE. For manual execution, I've never seen a problem. But when it comes to automation, I have an issue.

We've been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for about eight years. Our company has been around for almost 11 years. Out of that, for about eight years we've been using HP QC, now known as ALM. We've been using it continuously throughout that time.

I just recently returned to this team. When we started the testing phases here, I was leading the team. I moved out and I just joined it again three months ago. When I left, we were on version 11 so we must be on 12.55 now.

The solution is on the cloud, it is not on our premises.

It is pretty stable. I don't think we have seen any issue. The availability is always 99.999 and it has never been down unless there is a planned outage. 

In the last two years, we have seen issues for two or three hours, but that is the maximum we have seen. 

When there is a planned outage they always notify us in advance. Otherwise, the application is always available. Our guys work in multiple shifts. They work throughout the day and they work at night as well and it's always available.

If we request any kind of support, they are always there to help. They are very good.

Before ALM, we were only using Excel. But along with ALM right now, we also have some projects that are using JIRA, and there are some people who are using Confluence. The digital teams here are using JIRA.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had engineers come in and they gave us training and showed us what we would be doing. They were very supportive, from the customer onboarding perspective. They did a very good job. Initially, there was all this complexity. We didn't know how to manage it because it was very new to the team. They came and trained us very well. To put it simply, the onboarding process was amazing. We have monthly sessions with their team and we have continuous contact. It's pretty organized.

They started the planning two months ahead. Everything happened in a proper, planned way. That is something I really like about Micro Focus. The initial installation took almost two months. In part, that was because of internal problems. We were using Excel and some other tools. To migrate from there to ALM took some time. That included moving the data. We had to make sure that whatever data we had was not lost and that even the number of test cases was the same as what we had before.

Upgrades happen in a single day, or sometimes two to three days.

In terms of the implementation, it happened a long time ago. They first asked us for a timeline and they then held multiple sessions on the features and the abilities of the tool, with multiple teams over the course of two to three weeks. After that they came and deployed ALM itself and tested the compatibility with our machines, because we had some desktops and laptops. That took some time. Micro Focus gave us an installer that we had to push to all our machines. Once all the machines were updated with the installer, we started using it.

We have definitely seen return on our investment in Micro Focus. Imagine the amount of hours that our guys would be spending tracking stuff in Excel. If you look at the number of man-days that my team would have to spend on that and at the licensing costs, of course it is worth it. I'm very happy with it.

The pricing has been the same for the past few years. It is reasonable. It is not very high. Of course, the cheaper the better, from our point of view. But the tool and its quality are amazing, really good. And including the support their team is giving us, I think the price is justified. It's a fair price.

We did not evaluate other tools at that time. My manager and I — we came from different organizations — had both been using HP. I was using HP QC 9.0 when I moved here. When we started off our testing stream, the only tool that came to mind was HP. In addition, HP was one of the vendors that was being used for testing other stuff in our company.

Even now, we are not looking at other tools. 

It's all about the mindset. ALM has a lot of features. We, ourselves, are only using about 30 percent of the features. If you are expecting that when you start deploying ALM you'll be using everything it has, that's not the case. Of course the tool has all the features, but there are some customizations that can be done based on your needs, and the Micro Focus team will be able to help you with that. It's all about setting expectations and telling them exactly what you want.

Initially, we were not sure what we wanted to see. But after some time we understood that there are so many features. For example, the reporting part: ALM has automated reports but they require some things to be entered at first. If your team has the skill to set up your own stuff, that's good. If not, the Micro Focus team can support you. ALM can automate reports so that, at the end of the day, it sends out an email so your team doesn't actually have to prepare all that information and send it.

To make full use of ALM you have to invest some of your time. It has a lot of features. Most people will just use the basic stuff and they will be happy with it. But if you start exploring it, you will find it has a lot of capabilities. And they are all included in the licensing cost. Don't just go with the flow and keep doing what you're doing. Spend some time and ask ALM the right questions and they'll be able to help you. You will get more benefit out of the tool. That is one thing I have learned in using the solution.

Micro Focus is still investing in the product and releasing valuable features. We have been asked to upgrade our version so that means they are working on upgrading features and are fixing bugs. In previous versions, I was seeing that things were a bit slower. It took time to actually load. But now, my team is saying that it is fine.

In terms of security, ALM has controlled access. Every user has his own login and password. We restrict access. There is one admin on our team and he's the guy who controls who accesses our systems. Before we create a user ID for someone, they have to go through a review process. We need to understand which team he is working for and for how long he will need access. In that way, we keep things in control. As for uploading our data, I don't think anybody will be able to access it. It's pretty secure.

Right now we have 35 licenses for 35 concurrent users. But the number of actual users is around 400. It's being used by our testing guys as well as business people and even our senior management. If they want to see reports in real time, they log in and see them. From that perspective, it is really helping us.

We don't have many people involved in maintaining it. I don't have a dedicated person on our side to manage it. Micro Focus manages everything. I have one point of contact and she takes care of everything.

For me and for our organization, it's a really good product. I'm really happy with it. It's a 10 out of 10. It meets my needs completely.

We are from a Vodafone department that manages testing and quality. We brought this tool in to assist us. We are constantly using it. 95 percent of projects are running on it.

We mostly use this solution on our laptop devices.

It is helping with our delivery, testing, and quality processing. It links all our test cases with defects. Users from across the globe can comment on a defect or add attach artifacts to the defect cycle. ALM adds control with its integration.

We use it for visibility on multiple projects. We categorize all our deliveries into different domains and projects. Recently, we had a call with the technical team and they suggested to split our project into multiple domains and projects since this account is not that big. We hardly have six to seven projects running in parallel so we manage with one domain and one project, and all other projects are archived. We decided the way forward would be to split one project into multiple domains. This way, if in future something goes wrong, other projects will not get impacted if there is a problem with a project.

The solution’s ability to connect all related entities to reflect project status and progress is good. Right now, individual users are logging in with Single Sign-On and uploading their test cases. Performance usability is fine.

We have never experienced any security issues.

We can get an entire project into a single repository where we can view all the data in detail. This is where we keep all our test cases where everyone can reference them. This provides everyone access to the test cases and artifacts via the cloud. There is no need to contact anyone. It is the same with defects. It uses a common forum for tracking the defects and centralizing discussions.

Test Lab: This is where we keep all the test cases and mapping of all the defects. It's also for storing of all the artifacts.

Defect management: This is a good feature and fulfills all our requirements. We use it for user and role management. Only the admins can see all the users' details.

We use the application's Single Sign-On feature. The usability is good. There are no access performance issues. It is easily understood, even for new users. 

It takes time because it has a 360 view of all the processes when talking about test case, design, and defects. There are so many things to track. Therefore, if I try to inject Micro Focus ALM into a small agile, delivery project, there is resistance. If there is resistance, is there flexibility for customization based on project scale? I don't know if this is possible.

Also, it adds time when I upload and execute all my test cases to Micro Focus ALM. For example, when I prepare test cases, I need to run them individually, then upload them to my sheet. After 10 days, I might have finished all my testing after tracking everything in Excel. Moving to ALM at this point adds time and overhead. It increases my testing timeline, e.g., if my testing takes eight days, when I add on time for ALM, the testing time is now 10 days.

The version of Micro Focus ALM that we use only works through Internet Explorer (IE). We have to communicate to everyone that they can only use IE with the solution. This is a big limitation. We should be free to use any type of browser or operating system. We have customers and partners who are unable to log into the system and enter their defects because they work on a different operating system.

From 2011, we have been using Test Director, which became HP ALM, and finally Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

We haven't seen any issues when working with multiple projects. Maybe once a year, we have an issue with stability.

When this solution was upgraded to version 12.55, we saw some performance issues. We raised this as an incident. The team has worked on this and provided us with results. We have seen performance issues which may not be related to ALM, such as latency in the data or remote working conditions. These are issues that we are raising to the Micro Focus team though.

We have experienced some scalability issues. I would rate the scalability as an eight to nine out of 10.

We have about 50 to 60 users logging into the solution.

I would rate our Qatar technical support as 10 out of 10. Our technical support person is always available to help us. We are very thankful for the service and support. The communication is excellent. However, when we have an issue, e.g., an application is not working, having error, or we are raising a ticket, it takes time to resolve. This should be improved.

When we were installing for the first time, it was not simple. We could not just go to the URL and install. There were some initial installations problems with IE where we have to add the URL and make it a trust site. This had to be done by an admin, which takes times. I would like to see this improved. 

After the installation, we didn't have any problems with deployment or integration into our environment.

We can open this solution by URL and access the application where it runs to the server. We do have a restriction when installing infrastructure applications. We have to ask our IT to have our admin install it.

Admins should not need to directly install objects into the application. This should be done directly into the server or cloud.

We don't do any maintenance. The solution is SaaS and managed by the Micro Focus team.

The solution has saved time with background activities and helped my delivery to move forward. However, this application is a support function into our delivery.

Compared to the market, the price is high.

We just renewed our licenses, which took time to do. I think we have 30 concurrent licenses. 

The world is changing to open source code and free applications. This may be an issue in the future.

In one of our agile projects that was going into a sprint, we recently started using Jira (about a year ago). This was for a small delivery project whose team felt more comfortable using it. For example, if a tester raises a defect in ALM, there are many fields, including those that we have customized. It takes time to raise a defect, then close it. Since it takes time, the project team decided Jira is quicker and also open source. On the other hand, they agree that Micro Focus ALM is better overall, e.g., in the way, it keeps information and provides reports. Because the team didn't need a lot of information as part of their delivery, they went with Jira.

We are happy. It is a good product. We have benefited from the tool and recommend it. We have received very good feedback regarding its use. From a user perspective, the ability to create test cases and manage defects is excellent.

We are planning to integrate automation with Micro Focus ALM. This is in development. 

We are doing risk-based testing using manual generation of the script, then uploading it.

To use the flexibility feature from a requirement to my test cases and get the benefit of traceability per the SDLC process, I would need to keep and map all my requirements. It is on the user whether they are using this feature or not. While I know this feature is there, we are currently not using it. We are manually managing traceability. We are preparing and keeping all our test cases in Excel. When the test cases have built up, we are manually mapping them based on our requirements.

We are not currently using mapping test cases. This is a feature of ALM that would allow us to map our requirements, solutions, and everything the test misses. We had a call with the Micro Focus technical team regarding this and about how we can use other features. 

We've mainly been using the product for service requests and for migrating code and scripts for Oracle events.

The solution's value is its ease of integration with the Oracle e-Business Suite.

It's not a very user-friendly product. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is reasonably scalable.

Compared to other solutions, licensing costs are in the mid-range. 

We also evaluated Jira and we've recently decided to move to that solution. 

It's important to check that the product is compatible with your use case. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

I primarily use ALM Quality Center as a conversion tool.

Previously, we stored our test cases and results in Excel sheets, which was difficult to manage. Implementing ALM Quality Center has allowed us to map our requirements with test cases and use cases properly.

ALM Quality Center's best features are the test lab, requirement tab, and report dashboard.

ALM Quality Center could be improved with more techniques to manage Agile processes. In the next release, I would like a time management feature to be included.

I've been using ALM Quality Center for two-and-a-half years.

ALM Quality Center is stable.

ALM Quality Center is scalable.

Micro Focus's technical support is functional and responsive.

I previously used Microsoft Azure.

The initial setup was a little complex in terms of setting up the database. Deployment took between forty-five minutes and an hour.

We used a third-party team.

ALM Quality Center is a little bit costly.

Compared to JIRA and other solutions, ALM Quality Center is better for large-scale projects. I would rate ALM Quality Center four out of ten.

I'm using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for testing purposes.

What's most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is that it's useful for these activities: test designing, test planning, and test execution.

What could be improved in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center are the dashboard and the management tools particularly used for management reviews. Currently, what's missing in the solution is the ability for users to see the ongoing scenarios and the status of those scenarios versus the requirements. As for the management tools, they also need to be improved so users can have a better idea of what's going on in just one look, so they can manage testing activities better.

An additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is having management visibility on the dashboard. For example, it would be so much easier if there's global information that users could work with.

I've been using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for six months now.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a stable product.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center should be scalable, but I don't know what's behind the infrastructure, so I'm unsure of its scalability.

I don't deal directly with external support. I'm dealing with internal support, so I can't rank the technical support for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. I don't deal with their support directly.

My organization previously used HP Quality Center, but I don't remember the differences between that solution and Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. I also don't make decisions on whether to move from one solution to another solution.

I wasn't part of the team who set up Micro Focus ALM Quality Center, so I don't have information on whether the process was straightforward or complex.

I'm not aware of the pricing or licensing cost for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

At least sixty people who are part of different departments are using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center in the organization I'm working for now.

There are people who use the solution once a day, while there are people who use it twice a week, etc. It depends on their positions.

I'm rating Micro Focus ALM Quality Center six out of ten. What would make it an eight or a nine for me is improving the dashboard and adding a management tool that would be useful for management reviews.

When I use it, it is mostly for test management. The instances I've used are mostly on-prem.

It is a tool, and it works. It has got good linkage and good traceability between the test cases and the defects. It has got lots of features for testing.

It can be quite clunky, and it can easily be configured badly, which I've seen in a couple of places. If it is configured badly, it can be very hard to use. It is not so easy to integrate with other products. I've not used Micro Focus in a proper CI/CD pipeline, and I haven't managed to get that working because that has not been my focus. So, I find it hard. I've often lost the information because it had committed badly. It doesn't commit very well sometimes, but that might have to do with the sites that I was working at and the way they had configured it.  

The feature that I would have liked to see is more integration into CI/CD pipeline and agile pipeline. It should have integration with third-party tools such as Jira, DevOps, and the cross-platform type of thing. The versions I've used are older, so these features may have already been included in the new versions.

I have been using this solution for 10 to 12 years.

I've had many cases where I've lost data. I had bugs where I couldn't record, and the records got lost or locked, but rather than the actual product, it had more to do with the way it was set up at the sites I was working at.

It is scalable. I've seen big organizations using it.

I've not had to deal with technical support.

I also use Microsoft Azure DevOps. I don't really have a preference. It is horses for courses, and it depends on the type of application you're running. For older style waterfall projects, you can probably go with Micro Focus, barring pricing and others things. For agile or particularly a Microsoft Azure-based product, I would go with DevOps because of the better pipeline and the whole end-to-end integration.

I never had to set it up from scratch.

I've never been in the procurement process for it. I don't think it is cheap. Some of the features can be quite expensive.

Generally, it is pretty good for what it does. As a standalone tool for managing testing, it is good.

I would give Micro Focus ALM Quality Center an eight out of 10.

It is underutilized at the moment because we use this solution for tracking the test scenarios, test results, and defects.

We are looking at integrating a tool that can provide integrations with the other DevOps tools.

At this time, we don't feel that this solution has any value. We are communicating with Micro Focus to address this commission where we feel that it has more value added to it.

The integration needs improvement. It is not integrated with the rest of the ecosystem. It's a stand-alone tool right now used for testing and defects. We are considering and testing Octane because it seems to have more integration with the DevOps ecosystem.

I started using this solution when it was Test Director. This was before it was upgraded to Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. 

I have been using it for the last 10 years.

We are not working with the latest version. Rather than upgrade to the latest version, we are considering moving to Octane.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is quite stable.

It is not a scalable solution. I am not satisfied with the scalability of this product.

We have less than 50 concurrent users.

This is a product acquired from HPE. Before this, we were not satisfied with technical support. Micro Focus seems to be trying to improve their support quality, but we haven't seen it yet.

It doesn't take a long time to install this solution.

It's a perpetual license.

We are reviewing other solutions and looking to upgrade to Octane. We are currently, in the testing phases with Octane.

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