OpenText ALM/Quality CenterFormerly Micro Focus ALM/Quality Center
Overview
What is OpenText ALM/Quality Center?
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.
Micro Focus ALM experiences
Quality Center you love to be a part of
Senior Perforamnce Test Engineerblead
Quick Center
- (Scheduled) Regression testing …
ALM/QC - Probably Not the Best
ALM for All Mission-Critical Projects
HP Application Lifecycle Management may be the tool for you, but was not a great fit here
Comprehensive Cloud-based ALM that Feels a Bit Outdated
QA Quality
Quality Center - Core of Defect tracking
HP ALM - Excellent tool for managing Waterfall Projects
We are using this tool for managing projects working with …
Comprehensive Testing Cycle Management System
We are using ALM as our bug lifecycle …
HP Quality Center Review
ALM-the solution you are looking for QA Management.
HP ALM
Pricing
What is OpenText ALM/Quality Center?
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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- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Planview AgilePlace?
AgilePlace is a project management solution built around flexibility, data-driven analytics, and workflow automation. The software was acquired by Planview in December 2017 to expand that company's capabilities.
Product Details
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- Competitors
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What is OpenText ALM/Quality Center?
OpenText ALM/Quality Center Features
- Supported: Application lifecycle management
- Supported: Release and cycle management, with KPI and Scorecard
- Supported: Requirements management (Business Process Models, Baselining, and Version Control)
- Supported: Risk-based test planning and management
- Supported: E-Signature solution
- Supported: Application Lifecycle Intelligence
- Supported: Automatic execution and result collection of UFT tests (UFT One, UFT Mobile and UFT Developer) and BPT tests
- Supported: Automatic execution and result collection of other automated tests such as Selenium, through the Micro Focus Application Automation Tools (a Jenkins plugin)
- Supported: Micro Focus Sprinter-integrated manual testing
- Supported: WebRunner—Web-based client with manual and automated test execution, defect management and dashboard view capabilities
- Supported: Client Launcher—Full-function Windows desktop client, installable without administrator privilege
- Supported: Business Process Testing
- Supported: Quality of Things—Offline/online test execution client on mobile devices
- Supported: Quality Analytics (Reports and dashboards, cross-project reporting
- Supported: Defect management
- Supported: LDAP user authentication and SAML-based single sign-on (SSO)
- Supported: AutoPass License Server (APLS) integration
- Supported: Archiving wizard able to archive large amount of data for single or multiple projects
- Supported: Team collaboration using Microsoft Skype for Business
OpenText ALM/Quality Center Competitors
OpenText ALM/Quality Center Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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Reviews and Ratings
(105)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
HP ALM, previously known as Quality Center, is a widely-used ALM solution that caters to the needs of R&D teams across organizations. With its comprehensive features, it offers a complete ALM solution for collecting requirements, managing releases, executing test plans, and handling defect management. Users have the flexibility to write their own code using VBScript to meet their specific business requirements. The tool's scalability and support for clustering make it a robust solution for large-scale projects.
One of the key use cases of HP ALM is its effectiveness in managing projects following a waterfall methodology. It serves as a centralized repository for storing requirements, estimates, test scenarios, and tracking project status. The tool also allows for traceability between requirements, tests, and defects, providing transparency and facilitating informed decision-making for higher management.
Another common use case of HP ALM is within agile teams that use Jira for tasking and requirement management. In this scenario, HP ALM is leveraged for test management, enabling teams to create test cases and execute them while keeping their requirements and tasks in Jira. This integration ensures seamless collaboration between different teams and streamlines the overall testing process.
HP ALM also prominently features as a bug lifecycle management tool that integrates with other HP testing tools for automated testing. It helps QA teams maintain full traceability of requirements, tests, and bugs. Developers can easily update raised bugs and follow test steps for issue investigation. Additionally, reports generated from HP ALM can be shared with the project team to aid in decision-making.
Overall, HP ALM serves as a comprehensive solution for managing testing activities from start to finish. Its core capabilities like release planning, requirement management, test execution, and defect tracking make it valuable across various departments and industries. Whether it's managing defects in regression testing or monitoring and controlling workflow processes, HP ALM proves to be an essential tool for many organizations aiming to ensure code quality and project success.
Efficient Test Suite Management: Users consistently praise HPALM for its ability to manage a mix of automation and manual test suites. They appreciate the seamless integration with HP automation tools like HP Unified Functional Testing and HP LoadRunner, which allows for streamlined execution of automated test suites and automatic maintenance of reports. The classification of test suites as manual or automated in HPALM is also highly valued, enabling managers to track progress in moving from manual to automated suites.
Comprehensive Test Management: Many users find HPALM an excellent tool for overall test management. They highlight its support for defining, managing, and tracking functional, performance, and security test suites in one centralized location. Reviewers appreciate that HPALM covers all aspects of test management activities, including creating and importing test cases, as well as snapshot capturing. The linking of defects to test runs is also highly regarded by users.
Integration with Development Tools: Several reviewers have found the integration capabilities of HPALM impressive. They mention that it supports devops implementation through interactions with development tools such as Jenkins and GIT. Furthermore, users appreciate that HPALM promotes team collaboration by integrating with collaboration tools like Slack and Hubot. The ability to integrate with any environment and source control management tool is particularly useful for testers who value traceability and links between source control changes, requirements, and tests. Additionally, the option to create defects directly from test cases in HPALM provides convenience for testers when reporting issues to developers.
Difficult User Interface: Several users have found the user interface to be confusing and unintuitive, which has made it difficult for them to navigate and complete tasks efficiently. They have expressed frustration with the placement of certain features and have struggled to understand how to use them effectively.
Lack of User-Friendliness: Many reviewers have expressed dissatisfaction with the product's overall lack of user-friendliness. They believe that the interface is not intuitive enough and lacks clear instructions or guidance on how to perform various tasks. This has resulted in a steep learning curve for new users and has hindered their ability to fully utilize the product's capabilities.
Negative Experience with Customer Support: A significant number of customers have reported negative experiences with the customer support provided by the company. They feel that their issues were not adequately addressed or resolved in a timely manner, leading to frustration and disappointment. Some users even mentioned encountering unhelpful or dismissive responses from customer support representatives, further exacerbating their negative experience.
Users highly recommend ALM for test management and bug tracking, as it is considered a modern and good software for testing and Application Life cycle Management. ALM is seen as a complete tool for testing with handy and useful customization options. It is recommended for build integration with Agile and Continuous integration tools. However, some users suggest that ALM could use some UI updates and recommend considering a cheaper alternative if not all features are needed. Nonetheless, users highly recommend ALM for managing and logging defects, tracking test cases, bugs, and creating automated test cases. They also recommend demoing ALM for both business and technology users. ALM is seen as a solid tracking tool for data requests and change management activities. Users highly recommend using ALM for maintaining software test plans and executions. Furthermore, ALM is considered a great tool for keeping track of requirements, testing, and defect tracking, which helps in improving project quality. Users suggest having IT-literate employees assigned to ALM and recommend hiring experienced consultants for setup and mentoring. Finally, users highly recommend ALM for evaluating a Test Management Tool.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-9 of 9)Quality Center you love to be a part of
We can write our own code using vbscript to cover all our business requirements.
It is highly scalable as it supports clustering.
It is a robust tool but not Agile.
- Test Plan and Test execution
- Release Management
- Defect Management
- Requirement Management
- Workflow Management
- User management
- Site administration
- SAFe
- Agile
- Portfolio
ALM for All Mission-Critical Projects
- Well-structured folder system for all projects.
- Easy to import data from Excel files.
- There is room for integration improvement with other tracking tools.
- Automate Backlog/Project items notification to all team members.
QA Quality
- Defect/Bug management.
- Traceability with requirements, test cases and defects
- Defect linking
- It's very slow sometimes. There is improvement required in this context.
- Excel reports are not easy to create. Earlier versions were better at this.
- Only compatible with IE
HP ALM - Excellent tool for managing Waterfall Projects
We are using this tool for managing projects working with waterfall methodology, HP ALM is sued to store requirements, estimates, test scenario creation, management, execution, reporting & tracking project status. Its rich reports & dashboard help in keeping the transparency & helps higher management in taking decisions.
For agile teams where JIRA is being used, we also use HP ALM for test management. The model is requirements, tasking and tracking in JIRA while test cases, creation, execution, snapshot capturing in HP ALM. Definitely trace-ability is an issue with this kind of model where two tools are used & add up to some waste. It is used at program level.
- 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.
- It is a very costly tool so unless you wanna use most of its features don't go for it & alos if you want it to manage agile teams , I will recommend tools like JIRA, Rally, Active Collab & AgileCraft since these tools understand agile principles & scrum practices better than HP ALM.
- It has a very rich UI interface & is indeed a very simple tool but few minor issues like not opening another window , not allowing copy paste repetitive Dev-QA tasks makes things difficult for users.
- Though with new version Octane they try to incorporate new features & integrations supporting agile principles & practices but still many things are missing making it excellent tool for waterfall projects but not for handling agile teams.
- You can not run scrum meetings with distributed teams like you can do in AgileCraft. Also support for retrospectives is not up to the mark.
- It is highly dependent on internet explorer.Support for other browsers like chrome and Firefox is not there.
ALM-the solution you are looking for QA Management.
- Requirement analysis as a stepping stone of Test Case creation.
- Test Case creation to execution and corresponding logging and artifacts uploading.
- Defect/Bug management.
- Complete Test Cycle/Management coverage.
- Should have features that will help organization to implement new methods of Software lifecycle like Agile or DevOps.
- Features of Risk Based Testing should be more enhanced.
- Should of built-in features of version management.
HP ALM
- Defect Management and Reporting
- Test Management and Reporting
- Traceability with requirements, test cases and defects
- Custom reports
- Excel report are not easier to create. Earlier versions were better at this.
- Cloning a defect and editing will not save the data if we move to another defect in between editing.
- Sprinter integration can be improved.
HP ALM Templates to the Rescue
- The traceability between tests and defects allows testers to create defects directly from the test case, including the detailed steps to recreate the defect for the developers. Upon fixing the issue and deploying, testers can rerun the appropriate tests.
- Being able to test across multiple environments ensures that visibility into issues, developing regression scripts and other repeatable actions are available for different teams, reducing duplication of effort.
- Integration with testing tools such as Selenium, Unified Functional Test, etc. allows for development of automated regression suites to assist in maintaining clean code as it moves through the development lifecycle, especially on mature applications.
- 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.
Basic HPQC review focussed on test documentation/report capabilities
- Easily create database for test cases.
- Easily breaks down large tests into steps for better documentation and to easily reproduce tests from team member to team member.
- Look/feel of tool was old - not sure what version was used in company, however, it had what seemed to be older Windows 98 type panels, icons, etc.
- Test reports difficult to create.
- Difficult to sort database by tester, owner, etc., - would be beneficial for scheduling/planning purposes.
As Royal Caribbean is a very large company with many verticals running simultaneously, it provided QA leads, managers, project managers and business stakeholders a one stop shop in understanding the progress being made of any of the projects happening that were in the QA cycle. Less time was used generating manual reports in spreadsheets and disseminating them via email by implementing the Dashboard module and making the dashboards available to all stakeholders so that they could at any time, at a glance, understand the status of any given project in QA.
- One of the most important aspects of QA/ALM is the total trace-ability that it can perform: Test Case to Requirement, Requirement to Release, Cycle to Release. May products try to to this and in some cases accomplish it, but its usually at the standard level; Test Script to Requirement. They don't trace back to specific releases, or cycles within that release.
- Multiple variations on a single test script: At RCL you don't just test a function one time. You need to test it multiple times to take into consideration different brands, locations and agency types. QC allows the user to write a single scripts, but add in variations that will, when imported into the Test Lab, creates multiple versions of that script that needs to be run, with each having its own variation and results, while only having to maintain a single when requirements or functions change.
- Reporting is very flexible and allows the user to query just about anything they need to, which is very important when generating the dashboards for stakeholders. Different Stakeholders want to see different things, and this platform allows that to be done much easier the with spreadsheets of other products that are available in the marketplace.
- Licenses: The license structure can be very confusing and very expensive if you don't understand your usage needs. They are also not very flexible so take extra time upfront understanding your needs as you will be stuck with that for the next year.
- Support: I have used QC in some form or fashion since it was owned by Mercury, and over time the call in support has gotten worse and harder to use. 1st, the skill level of the different support specialists varies greatly. You may have to call back a few times before you get someone who really understand the problem and can assist you. It was not like this when it was still Mercury. Also, because the support is tied to your licenses again it makes it difficult to get help quickly, unless you want to spend LOTS of money. Again when it was Mercury I could call in, give them my company specifics and start getting support right away.