IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is an end-to-end engineering solution used to manage system requirements to design, workflow, and test management, extending the functionality of ALM tools for better complex-systems development.
N/A
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
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.
While working on a complex project it is important all the needed change requests are handled in an effective manner, this tool helps us do exactly the same, it had great features to manage those change management tickets, making sure to merge the change with existing workflow, prioritize the requests centrally so there are no duplicates. Easy to collaborate across different teams and colleagues across the aisle.
HP ALM is well suited for waterfall projects specifically if the teams are novice. It provides excellent support for project planning, tracking & test management. Top leadership can efficiently track, measure and report on project milestones & key performance indicators. Development teams have access to a wide variety of tools to automate their development, testing, bug tracking, and reporting tasks in one place. Its extensive documentation and tutorials help new users to learn this tool pretty fast. Though for agile teams HP ALM Octane can be explored but its not value for money & did not handle distributed teams well.
There are a couple of areas where IBM Rational DOORS is quite strong. First, it is part of the IBM CLM solution so the artifacts developed in this module can be easily available for other functions like development and QA. They can link with their stories and test cases and team leads and managers can use traceability matrix to find out where there are gaps in coverage.
Comprehensive configuration management functionality (concept of multiple streams and global configuration) is available, which can be helpful if you need to implement configuration management scenarios for your product or project. For example, a certain version of a requirement can be linked with one story and another version of same requirement can be linked with another story. This is the unique feature which other current tools in the market don't provide.
It's highly customizable so you can configure the project areas based on your need. You can have your own requirement types, and you can define templates to speed up the process. Comprehensive review functionality is there as well.
Release & Cycle Planning - Whether it is a new release or managing change requests, HP ALM can handle it all. In one click you can generate the status of a particular release from scoped requirements to test executed and everything in between. It also have KPI functionality which cane generate health indicators for each release to make go and no go indicators. The baseline features is a well thought out feature which is often neglected in many organization.
Requirements Management - HP ALM provides all the features which are needed by robust requirements management professionals. Teams can easily create and update the requirements and provide the full visibility to the team downstream. The tractability and impact analysis feature is the greatest suite of HP ALM complemented with great reporting and graphs.
Test Management - This is strongest module of HP ALM and provides the maximum values to team using HP ALM. Teams can perform manual, automated, performance and mobile testing with HP ALM. WIth HP UFT, teams can easily execute automated test case within ALM and report the results back. It also integrates with HP Mobile Center and test can be executed within HP ALM.
Defect Management - Simple and Strong are the two words to describes HP ALM defect module capability. Team can use it out of the box or customize it using workflow scripts to accommodate any process flow a organization may have. Their tons of features within this module which helps in expediting your release cycle and help you market the release faster.
Dashboard & Reports - HP has made numerous improvements to this module since I have known this product. You can generate any report or metrics if the data is present in ALM. Their are many after market solutions which can extend ALM data beyond the out of box reporting capabilities.
Too complex for projects or businesses that don't really need the detail. It is basically overkill.
If you are new to IBM Rational tools, it may be a medium learning curve. You'd also need lots of training from your people, since, as usual, this tool shouldn't be managed alone.
It may seem old fashion compared to Jira and the current control tools used in IT industry.
One of the downsides for us was the capabilities of the native build tools were lacking. The project management and work item tracking capabilities are great and I would recommend the tool to anyone. There is a definite learning curve with RTC as a source control system, and the streams are a concept unique to the product
The UI is terrible and not intuitive. Users need training in order to complete tasks. Much like SAP, it's not the clearest tool. The tracing feature is especially complicated because you must write the scripts yourself. There is a learning curve. Also, even the setup, installation, and logging in each time takes a considerable amount of time.
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.
It does a basic job and has the potential to complete some robust reporting tasks, however, it really is a clunky piece of software with a terrible user interface that makes using it routinely quite unpleasant. Many of our legacy and maintenance projects still use DOORS but our department and company use many alternatives and are looking for better tools.
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.
The established experience contained in most IBM Rational DOORS installations is only compensated by the high flexibility of Atlassian JIRA. The markets state that Jira is less expensive in the setup. There are many manufacturers that support IBM Rational DOORS to have the big tiers as their customers. Jira has problems in that growth. Jira has more features compared to IBM Rational DOORS. For example in cloud support, IBM Rational DOORS relies on improved external services while Jira abstracts in the most modern way. Jira experts have a different professional background compared to that of IBM Rational DOORS. They are indeed from different engineering generations. There is little interchange in personal and ideas.
We have various criteria as a part of the requirements in which we gathered from teams. We started evaluating each requirement across the tools, and we started providing score ranges from 1-10 and the Quality center holds top to that. Some of them are listed below: User Experience
The tool should be easy to use for testers, end-users, and administration
The tool should have available integrations to IDEs like Eclipse, Visual Studio and IntelliJ, which are used most commonly. Ability to execute tests from within the IDE
Available integrations to ALM tools (Jira) , where we are able to associate Requirements, Defects, Epics and User Stories with Test Cases. Ability to measure test effectiveness through these integrations
Availability of relevant documentation for users, administrators and managers.
Availability of on-line help for quick resolution to tester’s needs.
24x7 Vendor support for quick resolution to issues and to ensure maximum productivity
Availability of intuitive, easy-to-use interface for end-users
The tools should have the ability to import test cases from common tools like Excel and export test results into Excel and PDF
There is a low learning curve for end-users. The ability to quickly onboard technical and non-technical end-users quickly is great.
The tool should have powerful search capabilities and should provide the ability to search and filter based on test case information or attributes of the test cases.
The tool should provide the ability to search and replace text or field values and auto-replace content based on conditions.
Test Management
The tool should support Central management of test artifacts, and support for product structures for managing test artifacts.
The tool should be able to provide support for popular Testing Methodologies including Agile, Exploratory, TDD, Black box testing, Functional testing, etc., and should support Finastra’s shift-left philosophy.
The tool should support the ability to create and manage test cases and test steps.
The tool should be able to segregate manual and automated tests and should be able to measure effective automation at the product level. The tool should also provide the ability to link/associate manual tests to automated tests.
The tool should provide the ability to create test suites by associating test cases and have the ability to execute test suites as well as report on tests at the test script, test case, test suite, and product levels.
The tool should support Test Data - Defect Link and should be able to provide complete Traceability Coverage at product and release levels.
The tool should provide the ability to stop tests before complete execution. The tools should also have the ability to resume test execution from the point of last pause or failure.
The tool should provide the ability to capture screenshots of successful or failed tests for documentation purposes and to capture replication steps.
The tool should allow capturing and storing attachments at a test step or test step level.
The tool should support parameterization for different test data.
The tool should have versioning capability for test artifacts.
The tool should have the ability to integrate with Mobile testing tools and should help manage test cases related to the native apps, simulators, and emulators for mobile testing.
The tool should have the capability of creating manual template tests.
The tool should provide history changes for all available fields.
The tool should have the capability to save and view Favorites
The tool should provide a shortcut key functionality for features.
The tool should have the capability of scheduling the test suites to run.
The tool should provide the capability of the "Check Spelling" feature while writing tests. Reporting and validation
The tool should support standard test reporting out-of-the-box.
The tool should provide the capability of creating, saving, and reusing reports and dashboards for all users.
The tool should provide the capability of sharing reports within user groups.
The tool should provide the capability of exporting reports and report data to Excel and PDF.
The tool should provide the capability of customizing, configuring, and modifying reports to suit product development team requirements.
The Tool Should provide Dashboards, Widgets, and Reports which can be customizable for business teams to highlight scheduled tasks and provide insight into progress.
The tool should provide Full Coverage and traceability Matrix reports. Administration and Usability
Tool - Server installation should be available on Windows and Linux
The tool should support Windows, Linux UI, and Mac for client interface.
The tool should have support for Web interface and should have support for commonly used web browsers like IE, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
The tool should have support for LDAP servers (AD) and should support single-sign-on capabilities. The tool should provide the ability to integrate with multiple LDAP servers simultaneously.
The tool should have the ability to create users at the tool level (outside the LDAP domain) to support partners and 3rd party entities.
The tool should have APIs for integrations and reporting. Preferably, the tool should support REST and SOAP APIs.
The tool should provide authorization and authentication through user groups.
The tool should enable an easy way to create, manage, delete, and deactivate users and user profiles as required. The tool should have the ability to move users across groups in a simple and intuitive manner.
The tool should provide the ability to import and export users from Excel, LDAP, and through APIs.
The tool should provide the ability to segregate roles and responsibilities at a tool level, project/product level, or a group/team level.
The tool should support a distributed topology for implementation and installation.
The tools should provide clustering capabilities, high availability architecture, and options for disaster recovery implementation. The licensing option for the tool should also support these capabilities.
The tool should provide out-of-the-box capabilities for backup and recovery of data in a simple, initiative manner.
The tool should have the ability to integrate to Jira, HP ALM, GIT, and other standard tools that are defined in Finastra.
The Tool should provide the capability of configuring file change alerts and to whom to send the Email notifications.
The Tool should provide the capability of configuring user notifications. Integration , Automation, and Operation
The Test management tool should provide Rest API support for integration with the test automation framework.
The Test management tool should support rest API integration with the test automation framework. It should support the following features:
Automated Test suite creation, modification, and deletion
Automated Test case creation, modification, and deletion
Manual test case mapping with automated test scripts. API capability to do mapping externally
It should support live reporting of automated test during execution
It should support controlling test execution from external tools like Jenkins, VSTS etc.
Capability to upload, modify and delete automated test reports
The Test management tool should Feature to map automated test scripts with manual test cases and update test status and reports
The Test management tool should Feature to create automated test suites and execution controller dashboard with live report capability. Capability to define test execution dependency.
The Test management tool should report dash board for both manual, automation and test report history
The Test management tool should be able to run Test execution on remote machine and parallel execution capability
The Test management tool should have CI / CD support and integration with different tools like Jenkins, VSTS etc..
The Test management tool should have GIT integration
The tool should have support for mobile testing. The tool will have the ability to integrate with Mobile testing tools like Appium, Mobile Center, Perfecto, etc.
The tool should support native mobile application testing, simulation-based testing, and emulators-based testing to support shift-left.
RTC helps automate incident management workflow which improves our work efficiency. With the integration with Geneos and GSD, we can one click create RTC incident tickets from Geneos with most of the information copied from Geneos automatically and then link the details to GSD for privilege account management if needed.
RTC provides a holistic view on ad hoc production activities. We use RTC for production management. Whoever needs to get access to production due to non-planned activities (planned change is managed in GSD) has to raise an incident ticket or service request ticket in RTC so as to get production privilege accounts.
RTC is also being used to review and approve the usage of privilege account which help us to meet audit requirements. For example, if a user made some database change using privilege account under incident number xxx, an entry will be added in RTC and sent to account owner or production support manager to review and approve.
By developing a single template for use across all divisions, common training, ease of reporting, and consistent use is gained by the enterprise. This meets many requirements imposed by regulators as well as reducing costs for support, integration and training.
With consistency, we are able to develop regression tests and automate them efficiently. Having a regression suite ensures that code deployment does not break existing code. Once new capabilities are introduced into production, these functional tests can be added to the regression suite and automated for future use.
As the environment grows, the need to support multiple testing applications is reduced. ALM is scalable. As the number of projects and users increases, adding additional database or application servers is easily managed.
