HPE UFT, still going strong after all this time
May 10, 2017
HPE UFT, still going strong after all this time
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with HP UFT
HPE UFT (and previously HP QTP and before that Mercury WinRunner) has long been our main test automation tool of choice and underpins the majority of our regression testing activities. The versatility of it means it is also used to load data for the training department to use thus speeding up their work too. Without a robust automation suite, businesses would not be competitive in this day and age and for me, UFT helps to fulfill that need with ease.
- The simple front end will allow novice users to easily grasp the basics of automation and give them confidence to try things for themselves.
- UFT can scale up and run across multiple machines from a single controller, such as ALM, enabling hundreds of tests to be executed overnight.
- There is an active support community out there, both official HPE based and independent users. This means if you do encounter a problem there is always someone out there to help you.
- The later versions have many add-ins to plug in to other tools within the QA world.
- Expert users are able to utilise the many native functions and also build their own to get the most out of the tool and impress people as they walk past and see the magic happening on the screen.
- UFT also has LeanFT bundled with it, allowing automated testing at the api level - if you can convince the developers to let you in there.
- It is expensive, though different license offerings can help negate some cost.
- Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of record and playback because it will break and may cause you to lose heart and the standard HP guides only hit the basics.
- It is based on VBscript and so the language and underpinning tech is slightly dated but still works fine.
- After the initial outlay, it's soon possible to develop reusable assets and frameworks to be used throughout the different test suites.
- For one suite, ROI was achieved within 17 different runs. As this was carried out against different code drops and environments this happened in about three months.
- Proper robust automation will allow you to cover many different business scenarios in less time that manual folks will be able to just test the basics.
The only real competitor is Selenium but the simple ease and advanced features of UFT won out during the selection process. Also the ability to test against non-web based applications can come in handy.
HP UFT Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Kept well informed No escalation required Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | Problems left unsolved |
No - We used to have extended support but as our knowledge of the tool has increased we found the standard support covered all our needs
Yes - Over the years have reported differnet levels of bugs or technical queries. In all instances HPE have come back within a timley fashion and whilst some may take longer to resolve that others this is due to the complexitiy and really pushing the tool in it's use.
We had a long ongoing issue with the tool crashing at one point. One of the actual developers out in Isreal was assigend to investigate the root cause and came up with a satisfactory solution, which since implementing the crash hasn't reoccured.