OpenText™ ALM/Quality Center, formerly from Micro Focus, serves as the single pane of glass for software quality management. It helps users to govern application lifecycle management activities and implement rigorous, auditable lifecycle processes.
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Polarion ALM
Score 9.9 out of 10
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Polarion ALM is an application requirement management software platform now owned and supported by Siemens since the 2015 acquisition. It is available on the cloud (Polarion X) and on-premise. Polarion connect teams and projects to improve application development processes with
a single, unified solution for requirements, coding, testing and release.
Polarion ALM interface is much more user friendly, and the tool is completely web based. Thanks for the applications available in the marketplace it is easily possible to extend the application capabilities. Integration with most popular PLM, ALM or Service Management tools is …
Polarion ALM has the best usability, extensibility and reactiv product management. The support is also very good compared to other companies. Or in other words it is closer to the customer. Codebeamer is for sure also a good ALM tool with a great feature set, but existing …
For an organisation that has completely adopted SAFe structure including naming terminology, it is less appropriate and apart from that. It can suit any organisation out there, and it can solve all your problems one way or another by customising it. It is a robust and highly scalable solution to support all the business needs. It improves a lot of productivity and visibility.
The question is actually not trivial to answer in 200 words. To summarize, I can say that we have had consistently positive experiences with all customers where we have used Polarion ALM. The sector in which the customer operates only played a subordinate role. We use Polarion ALM in almost all sectors: Medical technology, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, agriculture, automotive and many others. It is also interesting to note that in the beginning we were mostly active in the development of products, systems or software. Over time, this has changed more and more for some customers and risk management or projects for lessons learned have taken up more space. This enabled us to banish a seemingly endless number of Excel lists. Who doesn't know this problem: at first there is only one Excel list on the drive. Day by day there are more. Some with a date in the file name. Others with an employee abbreviation. In the end, nobody can tell which is the current and complete list. The really good thing about Polarion ALM is that it is extremely flexible to use and the configuration determines what the project is used for in Polarion ALM. It is customizable to my situation and not rigid.
If you have a mix of automation & manual test suites, HPALM is the best tool to manage that. It definitely integrates very well with HP automation tools like HP Unified Functional Testing and HP LoadRunner. Automated Suites can be executed, reports can be maintained automatically. It also classifies which test suites are manual & which are automated & managers can see the progress happening in moving from manual to automated suites. In HPA ALM all the functional test suites, performance test suites, security suites can be defined, managed & tracked in one place.
It is a wonderful tool for test management. Whether you want to create test cases, or import it, from execution to snapshot capturing, it supports all activities very well. The linking of defects to test runs is excellent. Any changes in mandatory fields or status of the defect triggers an e-mail and sent automatically to the user that the defect is assigned to.
It also supports devops implementation by interacting with development tool sets such as Jenkins & GIT. It also bring in team collaboration by supporting collaboration tools like Slack and Hubot.
This tool can integrate to any environment, any source control management tool bringing in changes and creates that trace-ability and links between source control changes to requirements to tests across the sdlc life-cycle.
Polarion ALM provides a centralized repository for capturing and managing requirements. Teams can define, organize, and link requirements to other artifacts like test cases and development tasks.
Test Management:
Polarion ALM facilitates end-to-end test management. Teams can create detailed test cases, manage test execution, and track test results.
Traceability and Impact Analysis:
Polarion ALM ensures traceability across all phases of the development lifecycle. Users can establish links between requirements, test cases, development tasks, and other artifacts. This traceability helps in impact analysis, allowing teams to understand how changes in one area may affect other parts of the project.
Customization and Adaptability:
Polarion ALM is highly customizable to fit the unique needs of different organizations and industries. Users can create custom workflows, define custom fields, and adapt the tool to their specific development processes.
The requirements module is not as user friendly as other applications, such as Blue Bird. Managing requirements is usually done in another tool. However, having the requirements in ALM is important to ensure traceability to tests and defects.
Reporting across multiple ALM repositories is not supported within the tool. Only graphs are included within ALM functionality. Due to size considerations, one or two projects is not a good solution. Alternatively, we have started leveraging the template functionality within ALM and are integrating with a third party reporting tool to work around this issue.
NET (not Octane) requires a package for deployment to machines without administrative rights. Every time there is a change, a new package must be created, which increases the time to deploy. It also forces us to wait until multiple patches have been provided before updating production.
More robust engine as far as the actual took is concerned. There are navigation components in trace to reporting which we feel can be improved especially when dealing with cross global accessing of the tool. It slows us down a bit so it's backend driven optimization as well as some front end "clunkiness" that can be improved.
Improve some filtering capabilities especially in creating custom reports and generally all around the ALM components of the tool.
As of the version we have, the ability to enhance replationship types in traceability is limited.
There is too much at stake to go into a new system. But with everything else being promised as far as newer more innovative products, the justification to not renew is a huge risk so that is not a concern
Because it lets me track the test cases with detailed scenarios and is clearly separated in folders. Also the defect filter helps me filter only the ones that have been assigned to a particular area of interest. The availability of reports lets me see the essentials fields which I might be missing the data on and helps me to work on these instead of having to go through everything.
Polarion ALM can be used individually and what I do with Polarion ALM is decided by my configuration. Lesson-learned, operational risk management, product, system or software development or customer management .... doesn't matter at all. I decide with my configuration what I will do with Polarion ALM. Of course, you can also use Polarion ALM out-of-the-box for your development because it comes with a large set of project templates.For this reason, I would also recommend not to just get started. A suitable consultant will show you the right templates and customize them according to your needs. Having Polarion ALM is like having a car. You know exactly how to operate the car. You've done it a thousand times before. The details are in the configuration: did I have a navigation system installed or not? Do I have a lane departure warning system or not? Do I have cruise control or not? Unlike when buying a vehicle, almost all functions are already available and can be used, usually at no extra cost. However, if something is missing, it can be obtained via the manufacturer's extension portal. Individual extensions are subject to a charge. Polarion ALM - easy to deploy and easy to use.
It is a great tool, however, it got this rating because there is a lot of learning that takes a lot longer than other tools. There are no mobile versions of ALM even with just a project summary view. I believe ALM is well capable of integration with other analytics tools that can help business solutions prediction based on current and past project data. This is Data held in ALM but with no other use apart from human reading and project progress. ALM looks like a steady platform that I believe can handle more dynamic functionality. You could add an internal communication platform that is not a third party. Limit that communication tool to specific project members.
We have other tools in our organization like Atlassian JIRA and Microsoft Team Foundation Server, which are very capable tools but very narrow in their approach and feature set and does not come even close to the some of the core capabilities of HP ALM. HP ALM is the "System of Record" in our organization. It gives visibility for an artifact throughout the delivery chain, which cut downs unnecessary bottlenecks and noise during releases.
Polarion ALM has the best usability, extensibility and reactiv product management. The support is also very good compared to other companies. Or in other words it is closer to the customer. Codebeamer is for sure also a good ALM tool with a great feature set, but existing customers are often neglected. We will see, what PTC as the new owner of codebeamer will change at this point.
