OpenText ALM Octane Valuable Features

BJ
Process Owner E/E Test Management at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

The key feature is the usability. It is fast to learn and easy to use. It's very intuitive to work with. Most of the important functions are available via a few clicks, compared to other tools where I have to open a sub-menu and then a sub-menu and another sub-menu, and then press a button.

The native support for Waterfall, Hybrid, and Agile software development at enterprise scale was one of the reasons why we changed to Octane. In the development process we're creating the requirement specifications which are then handed out to a supplier, including Bosch, Continental, Alpine, etc. They then develop control units with software and we have to link our tests against those requirements to check if everything is implemented. This is a very important task. It's required by law. For example, for autonomous driving, we have to prove that the car is not, by default, running into trees. We are proving that by test cases that are passed. While that is still Waterfall, it's not Agile, we are using the Agile methodologies more and more to control our workload. For example, we are using a user story in test management to order teams to test a certain number of test cases.

In terms of integrations to proprietary, third-party, and open-source tools out-of-the-box, it has a very powerful REST interface. We can interact with other tools. OpenText also offers synchronization tools, OpenText Connect Core, which has out-of-the-box interfaces to industry standards tools. For everything else, you can use the powerful REST interface, which is both good and bad. It's good for creating an interface but sometimes our engineers use the REST interface to do things they should not do. But that's because engineers are always doing fancy stuff.

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Steve-Roberts - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at MFGS, Inc.

The enterprise view for application management has been great.

It’s easy to set up.

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Alice MacNeil - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Quality Engineering at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

The dashboards and metric reporting are valuable features for us. From a development perspective, we use Jira and Zephyr. To stay agile, we need to ensure that our Jira data is feeding into our ALM projects. It's about the real-time integration between the two and bringing that information across accurately. 

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Buyer's Guide
OpenText ALM Octane
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about OpenText ALM Octane. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
GeorgNauerz - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Partner at Georg Nauerz Consulting

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a one-tool solution, meaning you have everything you want in one tool, so you don't need to switch to other tools.

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VC
Lead Solution Architect at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees

We did an extensive market scan and evaluation before settling on Octane, even though we've been an HPE customer and Micro Focus customer for many years. When we wanted to get into Agile planning tools, 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.

The real power of this tool is how comprehensive it is, the breadth of what it covers.

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Jesper Halden - PeerSpot reviewer
Product and System manager at Tietoevry

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.

It is flexible. You can integrate it with a lot of other products that are available. If needed, there are APIs available. That's also very good. It's also pretty easy to adapt for the users.

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KS
Automation Architect at Capgemini

The most valuable feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the reports. We are able to do customization.

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SHARMA/RAHUL - PeerSpot reviewer
Customer Project Manager - Global Individual Assessment Program at Ericsson

The most useful feature of Micro Focus ALM Octane is the dashboards, they are easy to use. 

I'm using Micro Focus ALM Octane as a manager, and it is two times easier for us than other solutions. The look and feel are good and we can customize the reports and dashboard. From a management perspective, it's quite a good solution. The features are robust, ironclad, easy to configure and use. 

When it comes to CI/CD for the developers, I did not find any major differences with other solutions except that some things are saved in the files rather than being visible in the window. It is not available in the graphical user interface(GUI), but it is in Jira.

The solution is frequently updated with new features.

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Vindy Yonathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant QA Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The feature I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane is its ability to integrate with the CI/CD stack.

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Kees Beets - PeerSpot reviewer
WW Supply Chain - Strategy and Development - Senior Manager at HP

We like Micro Focus ALM Octane because its performance is okay, and its stability is okay, so we use it a lot. The platform is easy to use.

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JV
Vice President at Dugson Consulting

The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services. It can fetch insights about various deposit points after synchronizing with Jira, IBM, or other tools. It gives visualization through dashboards and reports updates quickly and easily.

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FK
Executive Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable features of the solution are its ability to manage test scenarios, test results, and test automation, which are its primary functionalities.

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ST
CDA Engineer at Hastings Insurance Services Limited
  • Octane is built on the SAFe framework, which is the agile methodology that we are currently following.
  • The capability that it has for so many out-of-the-box integrations is a fantastic feature. 
  • The very clean, easy to use UI that it promotes.
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Raghunathan Govindarajapuram - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Regarding features, the ability to work on the whole life cycle management, especially to manage the whole software testing life cycle, is the most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Octane.

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TL
Senior Software Engineer with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable features include the predictive analytics, being able to trace everything, and having all the tools for testing and test management in an Agile environment.

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it_user683523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Expert IT Test Service Management at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

It's hard to say which features are the most valuable because all the features are really fantastic. What distinguishes the ALM Octane from ALM.NET is, first, the Pipeline module because with the Pipeline module you are able to integrate with the CI server.

The second point is the support for the BDD Gherkin syntax. It's valuable because the point of BDD, I'm talking about the "culture," is to optimize the collaboration between the business - the product owners - the testing, and the development. We are pushing them to speak the same "language."

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AG
Release Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Currently, we have our hybrid delivery model, where waterfall still is a big part. So, if I look at ALM Octane from the module perspective, we are utilizing this requirement module. We took our day-to-day, grouping them by releases. Our requirements are stored in Confluence and ALM Octane. So, our project managers draw their requirements in Confluence, then we have a synchronization where requirements are brought into ALM Octane. Therefore, from the module perspective, the most valuable feature would be the Requirements module. 

We utilize dashboards for all their reporting capabilities to see where our software is from a quality point of view: test progress, defect trends, and so on. 

We are big fans of the Pipeline module, where we have our automated tests running on Jenkins and our pipeline is integrated into ALM Octane. 

Octane provides multiple plugins and integration with IDEs, so developers don't even need to log into ALM Octane, for certain scenarios. They only need to install the plugin into their development environment, i.e., Eclipse, Visual Studio, or IntelliJ. Then, they can sync their work items to this IDE where they can easily see what defects or user story is assigned to them. They can work directly from there by adding comments, changing the status, or even committing the code. This also applies to the pipeline for Jenkins. 

There are a lot of predefined reports. We can attach additional reports for users, like who worked on what defect and when, as well as what is the status of the release compared to the previous release. It is really endless. All the data is really linked together. Then, if all the data is linked together, there is an option to prepare reports out of it. We are very impressed with its reporting capabilities.

They provide all data integration. So if you have an edge use case, which you cannot do with what the tool provides, then you can set your data through all the protocols and even prepare it for the reports. I think they are very strong in this area.

On a team level, it is really good. We have received only positive feedback from our teams. It is visual, so there are different ways for teams to see their backlog. If they wish, it can be viewed like a list and a board, where you can look at the content per screen, release, or for the whole backlog.

The tool is very intuitive. However, it is still new, so you still need to learn and explore it, but that is a standard thing. Initially, we did receive some questions from teams, "How do I do this?" and, "How do I do that?" However, in very recent times, since it has been up and running, teams have enjoyed the fast, modern, new platform.

For the PoC, we have ALM Octane integrating with our CI server for continuous integration and delivery. We have it integrated with Jenkins. We haven't integrated our other server yet. We are still exploring the solution.

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JP
Enabling Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Very generally, the feedback that we've received is that people really like the user interface overall. It's intuitive to use, it's easy to learn, people like the usability features, the user experience. 

Another thing that people really like about Octane is how easy it is to customize. In some previous tools, that has been very limited, or you had to know how to write code to do some of the customizations, or it was very confusing. Going back to the user interface, they've made the customization of the tool, the workspace settings, very easy for people to figure out and use. We've gotten a lot of good feedback on that.

In general, I think people really like the Team Backlog and the capacity bucket for each individual team member. They like that ability to track capacity and progress very easily that way, by individuals.

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MS
ALM platform architect at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Backlog management is the most valuable feature. This was a capability that was missing or difficult to achieve in ALM Quality Center.

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DF
Senior Director, Global Project Management & Research at a non-profit with 11-50 employees

I like the fact that you can use it on top of Jira. 

Let's say for example, that if you have a DevOps team that is used to Jira, they can continue to use any of the Jira solutions and then have Octane layered on top of it from the business buyer's viewpoint to better use it more effectively.

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GeorgNauerz - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Partner at Georg Nauerz Consulting

The user experience is a lot better than any tool that I have used before. Overall, it is great. It has a smooth interface, which is very user-friendly. It makes it easier to work together and have more transparency and customization, which is very good. There are a lot of features where you can add fields, input individual fields, and input rules, like templated rule-based interaction between entities. 

The Backlog management is really interesting, because it is all in one place. You don't have a feature here and a feature there, instead you have the Backlog and testing using different backup items, like user storage features and tasks, all in one place. In addition, we are able to write documents, which we can transfer to backup items. Then, we can test them in the same solution without switching tools, or even switching from one part of the tool to another part, because it is all in one place.

We use the solution’s Backlog and Team Backlog capabilities. They make our DevOps processes easier through transparency and asset collaboration.

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WN
QA Specialist at Vodacom

I like that most tests are usable. I can parameterize, then use that test and pass a new value.

Its ability to handle a large number of projects is very good. I can just cross-reference and reuse what was existing before, instead of moving from one browser or application to another.

Octane's ability to connect all related entities to reflect project status and progress is great because even our team who runs external tests from Jenkins that the reporting is centralized. Because it was run from within Octane, the results come back into Octane. However, since I am not using those external systems, I only get results whether the test passed or failed.

The solution provides us with a single platform for all automated testing. It combines everything so someone doesn't have to look into many systems to be able to check this or that. They only have to log into one system to check for a particular requirement.

Backlog is like a library of our tests. It contains the features linked to the tests, so you can see which project or feature that you are working on. It is all in one place and everyone who needs it has access to it.

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GF
Test Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The most valuable feature of Octane, in comparison to ALM, is the whole Agile approach, that we can run it with the sprints and have it better connected to the whole development process.

The other 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.

Many things are nice so it's hard to say what is best; for example, the way it's organized. 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.

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MS
ALM platform architect at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable are the Agile practice methodologies. We have Waterfall with ALM and we use Octane for our Agiles. That's our distinction between the two.

I like the visual interface. The way they've redesigned the interface over ALM. ALM is kind of old-school, but it's mature and functional. Octane presents the graphics and the feedback that people need immediately without drilling into the dashboards. That's probably the biggest selling point for our teams.

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SB
Release Management and Testing Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

On the user side, what I like a lot is the reporting capabilities. There's no tool, to my knowledge, that gets anywhere close to Octane at the moment when it comes to the reporting capabilities. I can do everything with the reporting. There's nothing missing. I have all the options. I can create graphs, including graphs of several types and looks.

Octane provides out-of-the-box integrations to proprietary, third-party, and open source tools. The integrations are of high quality because we were easily able to integrate Jira with an additional tool. That connector tool is out-of-the-box and it's very easy to handle. We also integrated one of our in-house developed applications that has a rollout tool. The person responsible did it in one or two days with API connections. It was very easy for him. In addition, we integrated Confluence with Octane, using a self-developed script that is also based on the APIs. For people who know APIs it's very easy. 

Octane's Agile support at the team level is pretty good because it's very visible. The sorting and filtering are very advanced, which is something I miss on Jira.

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JT
Senior Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature is the product's integration with existing tools.

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it_user739560 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior manager IT at a transportation company

It's the most powerful tool to do Agile framework. It's very lightweight, and the tool itself is built based on Agile methodology.

My favorite feature is the user interface, how easy it is. And also how the modules are segregated in Octane. It is based on the Agile framework so it looks exactly like how you would develop your applications using the Agile framework. You get into user stories, you get into Epics. Everything has the same names so you don't need to interpret what is what. You can get into it right away.

I say to our customers, "You can just get into the tool, and just follow the process." That means you are doing the job, like you got into the Agile methodology.

I like the flexibility that I have working with them, starting from licensing it. The SaaS aspect, the hosting that they are doing, the way they respond to our requests, the way that I can escalate. And the way that we are working with R&D right now.

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it_user458409 - PeerSpot reviewer
Test Community Manager at Orange

The most important feature is the integration of 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. For me, that's one of the main advantages of Octane.

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AG
Programme Test Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The whole thing is geared towards Agile deliveries. It certainly has a good GUI, it's good to look at. The features provide good impact. It lends itself very well to Agile deliveries.

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NK
AGM, Delivery Excellence at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

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. 

In real-time statistics, anyone can go and configure it easily. The user interface is very user-friendly. 

We built a status dashboard within Octane by adding some additional user defined fields (UDFs) that use real-time status about how much a project progressed, how much testing is done, and how much testing is left. Then, project management can help with visibility of the progress for every project within Octane.

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YK
Transformation Officer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Octane works well with the Jira portfolio to track the project with two methods: Agile and Waterfall. We can track all the testing in Waterfall or Agile and synchronize it with Agile tools.

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WW
Qa manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The fact that it works on all the different browsers, it easily integrates into all the other tools, and that it looks like it will work with our pipeline 2.0 with a kind of DevOps in mind.

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VH
General Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The most valuable feature of ALM Octane is an easy implementation of Agile projects. It perfectly respects the theory of Agile. If you fill in the predefined fields you will get a good implementation of your Agile project.

If I go in details a little we can offer insights to easy identify bottlenecks in the projects, overloads of teams, stagnating tasks, TRENDS ANALYSIS and based on this info we can improve the SDLC 

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VR
Team Lead at Accenture

The most valuable feature is the test lab. For example, we use it for both mobile testing and browser testing.

The interface is user-friendly. 

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JS
Principal Consultant at SACS Inc

The most valuable feature is CI/CD integration, and it is a good fit into the Agile lifecycle.

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AD
Founder, Managing Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The valuable features start from the defect management in the life cycle and go into the part for versioning control.

The defect management gives us full-fledged capabilities for handling defects, including capturing the details of the defects and even screenshotting the defect cases. The defect management is comprehensive. 

Also the integration capabilities with other development platforms we were using was helpful. The out-of-the box integrations are definitely a big part of making Octane comprehensive when it comes to DevOps quality management. It is full of features and gives us flexibility to provide the needed integrations with different platforms.

The solution natively supports Waterfall, Hybrid, and Agile software development at enterprise scale. That's very important because there is a big shift going on from the Waterfall environment into Agile in DevOps. Having a tool that can give us both practices was important.

In addition, Octane's Agile support is good at both the team and the portfolio levels. It has dedicated capabilities for Agile and is very flexible and comprehensive in these two areas.

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Buyer's Guide
OpenText ALM Octane
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about OpenText ALM Octane. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.