We performed a comparison between OpenText ALM Octane, OpenText ALM / Quality Center, and Rally Software based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Atlassian, Nutanix and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites."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."
"A valuable feature is the pipeline, so that we can now connect to Jenkins and then have all the results from testing, from external, in the tool, so that we can see the whole approach from there. Also, We can work with labels so we have better filtering solutions than in ALM. And it's much smarter and leaner to use than ALM."
"It’s easy to set up."
"The filtering options are very good once you learn them. The document reports are also valuable. You can create reports in Word and PDF formats. That's very useful."
"Octane creates a gentle approach to Agile-based projects."
"The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services."
"An improvement on previous versions because it comes as preconfigured as possible."
"It's more streamlined because we have it all under one umbrella. And once the business requirements and rules have been created, we can do test cases and apply them to the business rules."
"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."
"The setup is pretty straightforward."
"Having the links maintained within the tool is a huge boon to reporting requirements, tests, and defects."
"It allows us to easily make linkage and dependencies, with plenty of integrations."
"The most valuable feature of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is the alignment of the test to the execution and the linking of the defects to the two. It automatically links any issues you have to the test."
"Quality management, project management from a QA perspective - testing, defect management, how testing relates back to requirements."
"I personally found the defect tracking feature very useful in my ongoing project."
"The test-case repository and linkage through to regression requirements will absolutely be a key component for us. We haven't got it yet, but when we've got an enterprise regression suite, that will be a key deliverable for them. We will be able to have all of the regression suite in one place, linked to the right requirements."
"Having that view into features and roadmap from product to delivery teams, and where they are going, then execute on."
"The transparency it allows us to provide, both from the team level all the way through the executive level within the company and the work that we are doing."
"The most valuable features are in-line editing, easy custom view setup, intuitive and helpful visuals (e.g., contextual formatting) and the collaboration features."
"It's a good platform to keep track of all the user stories across all projects. So rather than having one off Excel spreadsheets with all of the requirements, it is a good place to have all of that."
"It scales very well. It improves in technology constantly and gets up to speed with the latest and greatest."
"What I like most about Rally Software, in terms of using it for the agile process, is that it's clear, useful, and user-friendly. I also like that it has every field you can use for the Scrum process."
"Ease of use - I don't even know when a new release is coming and I don't need to because it's so easy to use what's new."
"We've actually used it for virtual PI planning. We have teams in different locations, and we actually virtually do PI planning, big-room planning, using the tools."
"We've only had a few stability issues. Generally, we have issues following any deployment they do, so if they do a deployment on a Sunday, then we may have a couple of issues on a Monday or Tuesday."
"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."
"The reporting is lacking from a requirements matrix and a traceability perspective."
"There is an opportunity for them to do a little more with the dashboarding. We still feel that HPE Quality Center/HPE ALM reporting is very powerful. We talked with R&D, and there are some things on their roadmap, but at the same time, their strategy is to connect Octane with visualization tools such as Power BI."
"Improvements could be made by way of additional integrations across the lifecycle."
"Technical support can be slow."
"Development of extensions or connections to GitHub actions could be better. Better integration with Azure DevOps would also help."
"Documentation is not clear."
"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 book. 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."
"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."
"Defect ageing reports need to be included as built-in."
"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."
"The support is not good and the documentation is not consistent."
"Micro Focus is an expensive tool."
"It is not a scalable solution."
"The downside is that the Quality Center's only been available on Windows for years, but not on Mac."
"Rally Software is highly complex, and it takes some effort to get everything tied together. But once you do, it's a satisfying experience, and the result looks beautiful. Azure, ServiceNow, and Jira do not have all the features that Rally Software provides in one place, making it an exceptional tool for project management."
"It is hard to track the changes. For example, we're in sprint 25, and then we have 26, 27, 28, and 29. Throughout that whole time, we're developing pipelines in Azure, moving to GitHub, creating pipelines, and working with teams. But sometimes, we need to revisit specific decisions made in previous sprints, like pipeline details. Maybe it's in our Azure Wiki, GitHub, or Teams, but it's not always consistent. I wish I could search for all tasks or stories related to that particular effort without needing to know everyone's individual stories or features."
"The stronger CA can get on dependency mapping the better. That's the biggest hiccup. As you're setting up your features, they should make it easier to flag the dependencies, either across features or across projects. Then you're more set up for success."
"I think the interface could be a little bit more visual and less wordy. Right now, it seems like it's just a lot of text on the page. In other ticketing systems where it's more visual, you can see more of a flow. But in this one it's more just a list of tasks. I would like to see that a little bit better, especially considering it has so many great organizational features, like child tasks, different artifacts. It would be great to see it presented more appropriately."
"In Rally Software, the connection with GitLab and GitHub needs improvement."
"It requires better scalability for the implementation of the whole suite. We do not use it in that fashion, and visibility is sometimes a problem."
"We want Rally to generate OKRs, to allow teams to record the OKRs, and then the OKRs can be mapped to the epics and there is organizational alignment."
"Customization features may not be exposed or unavailable, so people may be looking for them. So, customization is an area people have told me is more desirable."
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