We performed a comparison between Jira and Micro Focus Alm Octane based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Jira is a bit ahead of Micro Focus. Our reviewers found Micro Focus to be more complex to install and to have weaker security integrations. Its price point is more pleasing than Jira’s however.
"Most of my work is keeping track of what's been going on and identifying what is blocking future work. What I like about this solution is you can create a consolidated customized dashboard out of your files to identify what's been going on and identify who has how much data assigned to them."
"The solution is easy to use and user-friendly."
"For QA, the most interesting for me are boards, backlog, and filters."
"The burndown charts help track projects."
"Jira has a good reporting system. It also has an API, so we can do all sorts of reporting."
"Offers great multiple reporting charts."
"I've never had a bug or a bug message that I needed to open a ticket for."
"You no longer need to email people. You can mention them right in Jira and have conversations there."
"The most important feature is the integration among all the different features in just one tool: Agile management system, requirements management system, test management, defects management, automatic test execution. Really, if you're looking at other tools, you will never find all that integrated into just one tool with all the traceability, with all the elements in just one place."
"Its end-to-end traceability is one of the big advantages. Most of our agile projects work in a closed team structure. We are seeing what is the flow, where we are, and what is the project milestone. So, it provides end-to-end traceability and good visibility of project milestones."
"With an Octane project, we have our automation, our requirements, our tests, our pipeline into build-and-deploy, and the ability to identify problem areas. It makes things quicker because it's more along the lines of an automated process."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its ability to manage test scenarios, test results, and test automation, which are its primary functionalities."
"We looked at all the market-leading tools, but we did not find anything quite as comprehensive as ALM Octane. When I say comprehensive, it's not just a single tool for Agile planning, backlog management release, sprint planning, etc., but it also has a built-in, comprehensive quality management module. It also has pipelines where we can hook up with our DevOps ecosystem/toolchain."
"Backlog management is the most valuable feature. This was a capability that was missing or difficult to achieve in ALM Quality Center."
"Micro Focus' technical support is good."
"I struggle with Epics, how they are implemented in JIRA, because they don't work like any other Story, I see a list of Epics, but although I can order them, there are some mismatches with how the Epics are used compared to what Scrum expects, or what Story mapping expects an Epic to be."
"It would be ideal if the solution could be available as a mobile application."
"For our company, we're thinking about not only project management solutions but also collaboration solutions, and maybe if Jira had a chart or quick commenting option, it would be great."
"The GUI should have much better features like more graphical illustrations. There are some cases or benchmarks that we are trying to capture into a dashboard GUI's graphical summary, but unfortunately JIRA is not able to do that."
"End-to-end management from product backlog to test completion could be improved."
"JIRA still has their own backtracking tools. It should have a better visibility into HPE UFT. Most people use functional testing tools, like QTP. They need to improve their integration to make it seamless."
"They are not supporting in-house servers anymore and I think I've got until January to port this to something else."
"The solution lacks integration with visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau, which would be beneficial for better insights."
"Currently, Micro Focus ALM Octane is considered an old-world tool in the industry and lacks the perception of being a new-age tool among its customers."
"Because JIRA is a leading tool for both development and requirements management - everybody is using JIRA - I'm pretty there will be a use case where people are trying to connect between ALM Octane and JIRA. The back-end configuration of the synchronization with JIRA could be simplified. The architecture is really complicated. We required a lot of machines to build the cluster and the configuration was not really clearly described within the documentation. This may have something to do with the fact that the software is pretty new."
"We have some requests to beef up the manual testing abilities and the ability to report on testing progress. All the basics are there, but there's an issue of maintainability. For example... once you plan a test and it creates a run, more particularly a suite run, you can't edit the suite run afterward... That that is not realistic with how people work. Mistakes are made and people are humans and we change our minds about things. So the tool needs to allow for a bit more flexibility in that testing area, as well as some better widgets to report on progress."
"We’d like to see Platform One/Iron Bank compliant containers."
"Security and security management, meaning the integration of the security, could be enhanced. We know about Fortify, but it would be better to have security features in the original Octane platform without the need for another solution or another application."
"The solution should improve by adding scrum board-like functionality."
"Globally, I don't see many major points of improvement. It's mostly plenty of little things, and it's weird to me that they are not in the product yet. They are really details, but they're annoying details... Today, in the tool, we've got plenty of assets we can handle, like requirements, user storage, defects, tasks and so on. And to all of those elements, we can add comments. We can add comments to any asset in Octane but not to tasks. It's just impossible to understand why it's not available for the tasks because it's available everywhere else. Similarly, for attachments, you can attach files absolutely everywhere except on automated runs, which is, again, awkward. I don't understand why on this element, in particular, you cannot do it. It's little touches like that."
"I like their smart analytics; perhaps they should continue to expand and improve there because it's a fantastic start."
Jira is ranked 1st in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 266 reviews while OpenText ALM Octane is ranked 7th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 38 reviews. Jira is rated 8.2, while OpenText ALM Octane is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Jira writes "A great centralized tool that has a good agile framework and is useful for day-to-day planning, task management, and work log efficacy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OpenText ALM Octane writes "Reporting engine, widgets, and dashboards are a huge plus, and powerful REST interface means we can interact with other tools". Jira is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, IBM Rational DOORS, Rally Software, Polarion ALM and TFS, whereas OpenText ALM Octane is most compared with OpenText ALM / Quality Center, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Rally Software, GitLab and Codebeamer. See our Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane report.
See our list of best Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites vendors.
We monitor all Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
ALM Octane integrates easily out of the box with Jira,
additionally, once you DevSecOps users are onboard to Octane,
they will realize Octane does more, so they can reduce their dependence on Jira.
Several of my customers have come to this realization.
Octane is an Enterprise solution, but Jira is not.