OpenText ALM / Quality Center Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is preparing test cases, and we deploy the solution via desktop.

The independent view of elevated access is good. In addition, the elevated instructions being sent to our SQL is valuable.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the response from customer service and support could be improved.

We have been using this solution for fifteen years. We are currently using version 12 but intend to migrate to version 16.

I rate the scalability of the solution ten out of ten. There are currently over 100 users using this solution in our organization.

We have had a poor experience with customer service and support, and sometimes, we do not get responses from them.

We have previously used JIRA, but ALM was a better solution for us.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment is done in-house.

I cannot comment on licensing as another department handles it.

I rate this solution an eight 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.

• Test management for multiple products
• Risk-based testing
• Requirements mapping
• Reporting.

• Reusable test cases
• Requirement traceability
• Reporting.

Test cycles.

Bridge to JIRA and Tableau.

You can plan ahead with all the requirements and the test lab set it up as a library, then go do multiple testing times, recording the default that's in the system. Later, go back to check the coverage you are missing, so you can plan ahead and maybe reuse the same set as next time. Sort of like creating templates and reusing them over and over.

We use the quality engineering testing tool plus the defect tracking to make our reports, projects, and quality better. Once we had the evidence to approve all the testing and all the coverage, the reporting went better. Usually, the products make it much easier to identify the issues we have.

It is nice, but it does have some weaknesses. It's a bit hard to go back and change the requirement tool after setup.

It's not flexible enough. The formatting is also an issue. For example, the project manager doesn't like the use it, even for requirements, because it's not easy for them to change it. If they make a mistake and go back, it is hard to change the formatting to make it good. So, they have to share or use another one that try to upload. But, after the upload, you cannot change it because the IDs are identified. It's hard for them to work somewhere in-between, adding something in there, then keep the rest of them record is still linked well.

It's difficult to change it. Let's say you set up the requirement, if you change the requirement, by adding any on bottom which won't cause an issue, but I want to add it in central somewhere, then you mess up all the linkage for the test plan and test lab.

This requirement piece is what I think is the biggest disadvantage for the Quality Center. I do know Micro Focus does have a bunch of the new tools, but that depends if a customer wants to change it, use a new tool or stay on an older tool.

Reporting is a bit complicated. They have a standard report, but if I don't want to use that, I have to use the Excel reporter.

I have used it for the start of the implementation at our organization using Quality Center versions: 8, 9, 10, and now, we're on 11.5.

We host it in-house, so basically we don't have any bad downtime. It runs mostly 24/7, so Quality Center is pretty good with stability.

So far, it hasn't been an issue.

I would give them a high score as they do a pretty good job.

In the Quality Center, there's a tool, which we started with, QuickTest Pro. From there, we started to use QuickTest Pro, later we introduced and evaluated it. It looked like the situation we needed.

However, we wanted tracking. We started with QuickTest Pro, but now we're doing this, which includes a lot of the different areas, like it handles the workflow and/or agile and involving many necessary departments.

I was involved in the initial setup. I installed configure, manager, and the patch providing user access, though now we have a team.

The setup is straightforward. It's not hard to set up. We even used the multi-complicated one because we didn't want have the database alone.

To someone looking at Quality Center, I would tell them: It's a good tool to use and the support is good. However, if you want a fancy and modernized tool with a fancy outlook, then Quality Center is not a good tool for you.

Most important criteria when choosing a vendor: personal style. I want to know who will be continually knowledgeable.

• They know what they are selling.
• They respond back quickly with accurate information.

If someone talks to me, and I try a few times, but I cannot get clear information from them, I may disqualify this vendor completely.

The most valuable thing about the solution is it handles requirements, tests, and defects in one tool.

Most departments and some of our third-party vendors have access, so HPE ALM can be the single source of truth for what we are doing and how things are going.

How they organize content could be improved greatly in an out-of-box way, at least as a possibility for the users. The simplistic folder capability for reqs/tests doesn’t lead the users to a very productive method of test management.

It would be better to have suggested methods such as storing by subject/feature/functional area and to lead users into organizing this way. Then you wouldn’t run into the need to move things around in folders when release schedules/versions change.

Also, the style by which you document your regression tests is more automatic since you stop copying tests to a new folder for each release.

We have used this solution for two years.

There were no issues with stability.

There were no issues with scalability.

The level of technical support is very good.

I’ve been around a while and designed a few test management and automation solutions while I was with Motorola. I think our solutions were better, but of course, we had to spend a lot of resources on their creation.

The initial setup was straightforward, as I’m new to US Cellular and the tool/processes were in place when I got here. We are making some changes to drive improvement, but we are also analyzing how to go agile which isn’t easy.

I think HPE tools are too expensive, but dumping them for shareware tools, like JIRA, Selenium, etc., is also very dangerous and is not a silver bullet.

It’s too expensive for most organizations compared to some other tools on the market. I’d look at QASymphony, Borland, and of course IBM, before committing to any of them.

Most valuable to us is the ability to have the system organized into distinct roles and sections. That way, we can grant different users access to the specific section they need to access. We have business users that only need to run tests, so they only need that small section of the application. We have the BA's, product trainers, who only care about the requirements.

It has made our development process more professional. The whole interim process is a lot more professional. You can align it with the development life cycles, get the developers to buy in, and try and get it all linked in to the TFS Visual Studio.

Integration is also important to us. You've got Sprinter, which is quite nice for those that aren't familiar with what they've got to do. It's a nice little guide. Also, you can link it in with performance and automation tools, and kick things off with the push of a button.

New development methodologies, such as continuous integration and kanban boards, are being implemented by Microsoft and others to try to get their tools into the testing profession. ALM's got to push back and think more about the overall end-to-end development process. It's very much still a testing tool. We have a few awkward links rather than being a full solution.HPE ALM lacks a few of these features, but for a testing focus tool, helping to ensure quality, I think it's really good. It's good at its core necessities.

It's very stable at the moment. We're not on the most recent version. We have been using version 1201 for 2 ½ years. I did the upgrade, and I found it easy for me to do, because I'd done the previous upgrade as well. The documentation from HPE isn't that great if you don't know what it means. It’s been stable, but I say that, because I did the install.

Scalability is good.

Technical support is good. We've had to get quite deep down in some incidents, so we've actually managed to get through to third level support and speak to the developers. At that point, you're both talking the same language. They can understand your issues and you get good resolution if it gets to that level.

I was not involved in the initial setup back in those days. A couple contractors did it. It was called TestDirector in those days. I'm going to have a look at the new HPE ALM Octane later.

Their licensing model is expensive. We could scale it up and use it everywhere, but then, you look at how much it would cost for the licenses and you really think, "Is it worth it?"

I was not involved with the decision process, but I did put a case together to continue using it. Our parent company was trying to push us to use Microsoft TFS. I was basically showing how much better ALM is over TFS. For what we were using it for, it's just much better than TFS. It was the testing tool of choice.

Try and have a play with it and don't be afraid to customize. We've got this big workflow in ours, so you can control the rules a lot better as to who can do what, who has access, and what they can see. Out of the box, it's a bit vanilla and there's the risk that someone could be given wrong permissions and accidentally do something they shouldn't.

We use this solution primarily for doing test cases and running UFT cases.

The integration with UFT is nice.

We are having a lot of problems with this solution. One example is that users are able to run test cases, but the permissions are managed by another group.

I don't have the ability to create test sets.

A lot of the testing steps are ad-hoc in nature where they have a lot of prerequisites, but they don't specify what the prerequisites are.

The organization that I am at is not very good in the sense that even finding test cases that need to be run is very difficult.

The UFT tests don't work very well and it seems to depend on things as simple as the screen resolution on a machine that I've moved to. Specifically, if I move to a screen with a different resolution then it throws things off.

I first started using Micro Focus ALM Quality Center in 2011.

We are using version 12. It has a new name, it's called HPE application Lifecycle Management.

The stability of the hardware is okay. It's just the tool itself is not easy to use at all.

The scalability is not great at all, especially with the licensing model.

I have never had to use them because we have an in-house group that manages many of our issues. I don't know what their interactions have been with Micro Focus, but I have personally had never reached out to them.

My experience with it, in general, is that the initial setup is not easy and that upgrades are dreaded. Companies tend to not go through the upgrade process because it causes many different types of issues, especially on the database side. This seems to be a longstanding bug with the management of permissions that goes all the way back to quality center days that have never been addressed. 

I would say that the initial setup is not easy at all.

The licensing model is an area that can be improved.

The cost of licensing depends on the number of VMs that you are running test cases on and it is not cheap. To the best of my recollection, it is several thousand dollars per license.

We are having a lot of problems with this product and we're now looking at other options.

This is a product that I do not recommend but if someone were in a situation where they were intent on using it, my advice is definitely to plan it out ahead of time. Don't try to wing it and learn it on the fly. Have someone who knows the tool and can set up the proper authorization because otherwise, it will be like ours, which is a mess.

I would rate this solution a three 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.