OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

We use the solution for test management and gathering requirements and test cases.

Business process management is the most valuable feature of the solution.

Sometimes the product is slow. We do not know if it is an issue with Micro Focus or our internal network. The performance could be faster.

I have been using this solution for one year.

I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. Three of our customers use the product. There are about 720 users in our customers’ organizations.

We do not have any plans to increase the numbers. It depends on our customers.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was taken care of by another team in our organization.

We need one engineer to deploy and maintain the product.

We have experienced business-related benefits from the tool.

We have to pay an annual license fee for the product. The licensing fee is a little expensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten.

We had considered other products like qTest, TestRail, Xray, and Jira. We chose Micro Focus because our clients wanted it.

I will definitely recommend the solution to others. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for test management, including test case creation and execution, and we also use it for planning different test cycles during regression tests. We handpick the cases, plan different test cycles, and use Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for defect creation.

What I found most valuable in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is the ease of use, especially compared to Micro Focus ALM Octane, that's more difficult because it doesn't have clear-cut options.

For example, in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center, creating test cases is easier because the solution allows writing in Excel. There was a template provided, so you can write on the template and upload it, which means you can quickly write and upload many cases at once, so that's the main advantage of Micro Focus ALM Quality Center.

Planning regression cycles on the tool was also easier because you could mark regression cases and handpick your planned cases for execution rather than pulling every case, which was more difficult.

An area for improvement in Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is not being able to update the Excel sheet where I wrote the test cases. I don't experience issues when writing and uploading new cases on the sheet. Still, whenever I update some test cases, I'm unsuccessful because there is overlapping data or some cases are missing from the sheet. Micro Focus needs to improve on that aspect.

What I'd like to see in the next Micro Focus ALM Quality Center release is more report formats, for example, a graphical reporting format. Right now, you'll find just one or two formats available in the tool for reporting.

Report preparation and generation should also be easier because I have to put in each parameter, and if I miss one parameter, the report will look weird. Pulling in parameters should be simplified and quicker, and it should be easier to generate reports on Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. Reporting in the tool should be more user-friendly. At least for day-to-day or regular weekly reporting.

At the end of the project, if you want a more sophisticated report, the tool should have a reporting option that looks more high-level and similar to what data warehouse and BI solutions provide. You can integrate Micro Focus ALM Quality Center with BI or data warehouse tools to get that kind of reporting, but it would be great if you could do it on the tool itself without needing to integrate it with other tools.

I want Micro Focus ALM Quality Center to have a report that shows data analytics, how many test cases I executed for a specific period, the percentage of tests that passed or failed, etc. There should be data available for extraction from year to year, from an overall project perspective, rather than just day-to-day or week-to-week.

I started using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center in 2017, so I've used it for five years. I'm still using the solution.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is pretty stable, so it's an eight out of ten for me. I've been using it for the last five years, and it's stable.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a scalable product. It's a seven out of ten for me.

Most of the time, the technical support for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center was excellent. I only recalled a few times when it wasn't so great. I'd rate support as seven out of ten.

Neutral

Setting up Micro Focus ALM Quality Center was easy, so I'd rate it as eight.

In my project, I'm using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center version 12.5, but I'm checking if I can use Micro Focus ALM Octane because I have a trial version.

My rating for Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is eight out of ten.

We're pretty heavily dependent upon that tool, in terms of the test management overall and using UFT as an automation, as well.

The product overall it's pretty good. 

From a DevOps perspective, there are a lot of opportunities that they can give in build solutions.

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very user-friendly.

We are looking for tools that offer quick automation for using a low-code, no-code, model testing, et cetera, which can reach more non-legacy technologies.

We are looking for more automation capabilities.

We would like end-to-end agile delivery, which is coming up. I can't comment on if it will properly suit us or offer the integration with other technologies, such as  Service Now or Azure Boards, et cetera. I've seen a few integration issues. It's my understanding that we have to go for third-party add-ons.

We are still evaluating. I don't have many answers yet however, it does look like we have to rely on third-party add-ons to get this integration done. We'd like to have more built-in capabilities. 

If they can bring in inbuilt APIs to connect to this, at least the standard technologies, like Service Now, Azure Boards, JTOC conference, et cetera, that'll be great. 

As we are behind a few versions, I don't know whether anything available is in the latest version in regards to business process testing, where you can sequence the steps and having a collaboration by notifications et cetera, that would be ideal.

We are working to get to the latest version to see what else may have been added or adjusted. 

We have been using the solution pretty much for 15 years now.

In terms of stability, there's no issue. Unfortunately, due to quite a lot of projects going on year over year, we are a little bit behind on the versions. We are on the 12.2. We have to move to 15.5 from QC. While it's a big jump, we are evaluating it as a big jump and see it as a good thing. However, there is the chance that we choose some other products and move from Micro Focus.

I can't comment much on pricing. The reason is, we get the pricing for Micro Focus through SAP as part of an enterprise contract. We don't actually get it from Microsoft Focus and due to the fact that there's a part of the SAP that's 15 years old, we have one of the cheapest licenses probably in the world. That's one of the reasons why it's hard for us to make a business case to move to any other product at the moment, as the licensing is quite cheap for us.

We are currently evaluating Tricentis Tosca.

We are customers and end-users.

From my perspective, it's a great tool, however, the world is now moving towards DevOps. That said, they could bring some capabilities with open-source tools like Azure DevOps. It might add better value for users. That said, this solution is a very stable, very user-friendly tool. The integration, however, is an issue.

If somebody's looking for an independent tool for test management, it's good, however, for other areas where you need to get the full integration without investment on other add-ons, this solution won't easily allow this.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

ALM is a well-known product and is one of the pioneers in providing test management facilities with a 360 degree view of requirements.

ALM has got really a good feature which captures screens, decodes them and puts them in a code format. It becomes so easy to capture your screens and run through various screens and prepare your test cases, rather than typing it in Excel or manually in ALM itself. I think that's a really handy tool to have and it's very intuitive to use.

Certain applications within this solution are not really compatible with certain applications like ERP. The problem is when we're trying to use these applications or devices, the solution itself doesn't scale. It has got a lot of problems scaling up and down with the resolution of the devices that you use, and hence we had to stop using ALM and go for something else that was more user-friendly.

The resolution is very clunky and its fields get hidden in the menu boxes. This is also a very expensive solution. 

I have been using this solution for 10 years.

This is a stable solution. 

The customer support team are good. They used remote access to my PC to resolve an issue.

Neutral

It was straightforward. There were no complications in setting it up at all.

We used a third party for the setup.

This is an expensive solution. 

ALM is a good product but you need to be mindful of how it scales on your devices that you use because we use smaller devices compared to what we used to use in the past. The laptop screens have reduced in size so you need to make sure that they scale to the resolution of the device.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

The primary use cases for this solution are testing, recording and auditing results, and creating test cases and test plans.  

The most valuable Quality Center feature, I find, is the solution's integration with some of our automation tools. For us, the ability to capture and record and the ease of use from a user perspective, are all key. Most of the users using ALM are on the business side. In other words, we've got end users that are in there, not IT personnel, which is why it is important that the solution is intuitive and easy to use.

There's room for improvement in the requirements traceability with Micro Focus ALM Quality Center. That could use an uplift. 

We have used ALM tools for probably the last 20 years. 

We have used ALM tools for about two decades and many of our business teams are familiar with them, which is why we ultimately chose this route. 

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center has always met our requirements, which is why any minor issues we've had with requirements traceability have never really been a big deal. But there really hasn't been a whole lot of change in those areas in several years. I'm sure that they are working on a roadmap, which I haven't gotten to see yet only because I haven't been pushing to see it, but I understand that there's much in the works. 

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

We were using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center for our test management for lots of products. I installed ALM myself, and we were using it for SAP deployment. We were using Requirement modules, Test Plan modules, Test Lab modules as well as the Defect modules in ALM. Not only for this product, but also for other companies like Cooper, Active, Delphi, Allegis and DLM for test management.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very good test management tool especially for writing test cases and uploading. You can even upload the test cycles from Excel. You get the defects and the reports, and also some automation using EFT which works with ALM. All these features are good.

In terms of places for improvement, Micro Focus is an expensive tool. We see nowadays that there are other products coming, and Micro Focus is more expensive and there are lots of license costs. Lots of companies are not taking it because of the cost.

It would be a good idea if they could deal with some user features and take a look at the cost. Because there is a lot of maintenance. People buy licenses and then every year they need to pay around 18% support charge, et cetera. It depends on the companies. Some rich companies buy it. Mid-level and smaller companies may have difficulties with this one.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a very recent name. It really started back in 2000, almost 20 years before. This product belonged to Mercury Interactive. After that HP bought it. From HP, Micro Focus bought it. I have been working on this product for the last 20 years. Initially they called it TestDirector. After that it become Quality Center. Now it's ALM.

As far as performance is concerned, it is a very, very, very robust tool. It works. The only thing is the number of licenses. Because you buy licenses of 50, only 50 can concurrently use it. There could be 400 named users. 

It requires low maintenance, and the user creation is simple. If you want to quickly add any users, or if you want to quickly create a project, it is straightforward and easy.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is scalable in terms the database size and the repository. It has storage in two places; service level and at Windows level, the File System level. Lots of documents get stored in the Windows level, the File System level. So as long as you have good enough space, 100 GB or 150 GB is good enough. Only two limitation. One is licenses. The second is the server. So we usually recommend around 100 GB, 50 GB to 100 GB, which is enough.

We usually have 200 users using it. Usually, people buy a 50-user license but that could be used by 300 people, 300 users, because not everybody will be logging on at the same time. So scalability depends upon the license.

In terms of maintaining and deploying the updates, it does not take more than one person, probably not even that. I would say 1/4 person for this role. That person is a system admin. I used to do that, too. I was doing upgrades and configuring all myself. At the same time I was managing the actual deployment of the test phase.

This takes about one day a month.

Tech support handled most of the issues handled well, but not where there is a problem. Whenever we buy a product from Micro Focus we usually buy from Micro Focus directly. Or there are second sellers and we can buy from them, and they give you support. Whenever we have a problem, Micro Focus is very good at support. We log a ticket and they support it.

Initial setup is very easy. Usually there are two ways of doing it. We needed two servers; an app server and a database server. Usually Micro Focus, like other companies, installs it on their cloud or you can install it yourselves. It's not very difficult. I was doing that too.

When we have the ALM we can install it very quickly. It does not take much time, maybe three or four days. Once the system is ready we can pretty much install ALM and apply the license, which then deploys to users. Configuring is very easy. I was creating users and different groups, putting in lots of configuration.

Usually, whenever I work with the clients, I recommend ALM for the separate deployments and separate implementations because it's easy to use and good with those things. However, because of the cost there are some clients that cannot afford the high price, or can afford it but they don't want to pay that much.

As SAP Solution Managers, we try to use it. But people also use Jira. Jira has a very high level test management tool. So people who can't afford the price go with Jira.

Micro Focus ALM Quality Center is a good solution. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a nine.

To store all tests including manual and automated tests along with the results of tests after they were executed. Tracking defects, scheduling test sets for automated UFT tests to run unattended from the Test Lab, storing the test cases, and also storing the test requirements in the Requirements Module. 

The Application Lifecycle Management Process with ALM includes the following phases

• Release Specifications: Develop a release-cycle management plan to help you manage application releases and cycles efficiently.
• Requirement Specifications: Define requirements to meet your business and testing needs.
• Test Planning: Based on the project requirements, you can build test plans and design tests.
• Test Execution: Create a subset of the tests in your project designed to achieve specific test goals. Execute scheduled tests to diagnose and resolve problems.
• Defect Tracking: Submit defects and track their progress and status.

Multiple users can execute tests independently on their own computer because the UFT scripts are stored in ALM/Quality Center which is web based. All test cases are stored in one location (ALM) which makes it easier for users to access and maintain.

New users can quickly be added and set-up to have access to given projects in Quality Center in less than an hour.

The Defect Module can be customized to your department's needs. At a former company, we held regular meetings and used the Defect Module with a projector to go over the defects found during the previous week.

• Ability to execute automated UFT scripts from Quality Center and store the results
• Ability to customize modules, particularly Defect Tracking module on company specific needs
• The user can export a lengthy test case with a lot of steps from Excel directly into Quality Center, which saves a lot of time. Conversely, a user can export a test case with all steps from Quality Center to Excel.
• Users can save screen shots of defects and also perform manual testing by using Manual Runner that verifies whether each step passed or failed and save the results along with information such as the date/time executed and who the tester was that performed the manual test.

When a particular version of Quality Center has reached end of life, the customer is forced to upgrade to the newer version to be eligible to get technical support. The upgrade process can be time intensive and requires a lot of planning. Quality Center seems to originally designed for a Waterfall process. However, the newer versions of ALM are more adaptable to Agile testing methodology.

The BPT also known as Business Process Testing can sometimes be very time intensive and sometimes might not be very intuitive to someone who is not familiar with BPT. ALM/QC supports IE but does not support Chrome which a lot of users like/want to use.

History of Quality Center including other names and versions:

On September 1, 2017 the HPE testing tools officially became Micro Focus. It is too early to see how the transition to Micro Focus will change things. I am keeping an optimistic view that Micro Focus will continue to invest in R&D and place a priority on customer support. I believe a lot of long-time customers would like to see things run like they were back in the Mercury Interactive days, which was one of the most innovative software companies of its time. If Micro Focus develops the right strategy, they could become a dominant player in the software testing market.

It is beneficial for the reader to understand the history of Quality Center since it has gone through several name changes and versions, so I have listed the chronological events below:

1. Mercury Interactive originally came out with TestDirector that included versions 1.52 to 8.0.

2. Mercury renamed the product TestDirector to Quality Center in version 8.0.

3. HP acquired Mercury and rebranded all Mercury products to HP. Therefore, Mercury Quality Center became HP Quality Center.

4. HP released version 11.00 and renamed it to HP ALM (Application Lifecycle Management).

5. In June 2016, HP released ALM Octane.

So essentially, the tool at one time or another has had the names TestDirector, Quality Center, ALM, and ALM Octane. Essentially, with each version and name change there has been added functionality.

10 plus years.

Sometimes when ALM is open and there is another browser open, Quality Center will crash.

No issues encountered, in fact, it's very straightforward to add users.

Customer Service:

9/10.

Technical Support:

9/10.

I have worked at companies that used open source tools and ALM/Quality Center. I have also worked at a company that simultaneously used both Quality Center and Rally.  Rally is also a good tool and seems to be developed more for the Agile methodology. However, when using UFT we always used it with ALM/Quality Center because we could store all of the run results from automated tests.

The initial set-up required a lot of resources, such as the Oracle DBA, because Quality Center stores its information in tables in a database. You also have to plan and coordinate with System Analysts what servers will be used along with the architecture.

N/A

Giving an ROI on a software product is a complicated task. I like to use the Space Shuttle as an analogy. From an economist's point of view, he or she might say the Space Shuttle program cost billions of dollars and did not see nearly that amount in hard dollars generated from resources/time saved in return. I believe NASA did get paid to put satellites into orbit via the Shuttle for private companies but it was less than the whole costs. On the other hand, a scientist could say the Space Shuttle program made many significant discoveries and also put into orbit the Hubble Telescope which discovered and took pictures of the Universe that was not possible from Earth. The Economist would just use a formula to calculate a number stating it is a bad ROI. The Scientist would say the Shuttle definitely added value by making new discoveries that advanced science so far that it cannot be measured in dollars and say it is a good ROI. My point here is that "what is the ROI" is a common question at companies and it can vary greatly on how a person approaches and perceives it.

With all this in mind, my answer is that Quality Center definitely adds value to an organization and over the long run has a positive ROI that will keep increasing over time primarily by saving time for users the more they use the functionality of all the modules. For example, using Quality Center to schedule automated test suites to run unattended increases ROI.

For licensing, find out the number of users who will be using it concurrently, and use that number as a starting point for the number of licenses to purchase. Quality Center is pricey, but cheaper is not always less expensive.

No other options were evaluated.

Write out and document all the steps and resources beforehand, and make sure everything is in place before implementing. Make sure you read the minimum requirements listed in installation instructions needed for all hardware (i.e. servers, etc.) and double-check it to ensure it is met.

It gives us a solution where we can keep everything centralized like our test scripts, test data, and our projects. It doesn't matter who is creating the project, everybody can access and execute it. Both our onsite and offshore teams working from different locations are able to benefit from this solution. That's the beauty of it.

When we implemented this solution, we chose to virtualize, so we didn't implement any physical hardware. We're able to scale very quickly for very large projects when we need to run 5,000 user simulations. Afterwards, we can also scale down quickly. This gives us a lot of flexibility in our project executions.

The web client doesn't match the quality of the rest of the features of this solution. HP needs to improve it.

There are some challenges we faced during the deployment. But, we've had no major issues.

We've used versions 11, 12, 12.2, and now, 12.53. They've been very stable in our environment.

We're able to scale up and down as needed. It has great flexibility when it comes to scaling.

There are challenges related to the network security during the set up. But, once you figure it out, solution is relatively easy.

We have done the implementation in-house.

While comparing to the previous solution, this solution gave us as much as 60% cost savings.

Before you start implementing, make a solid plan and try to figure out the challenges before hand.