OpenText ALM/Quality Center vs. Rally Software

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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.N/A
Rally Software
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Rally Software headquartered in Boulder, Colorado developed the Rally agile software development / ALM platform which was acquired by CA Technologies and rebranded as CA Agile Central. After CA's acquisition by Broadcom the software was once again rebranded as Rally.N/A
Pricing
OpenText ALM/Quality CenterRally Software
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
OpenText ALM/Quality CenterRally Software
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
OpenText ALM/Quality CenterRally Software
Considered Both Products
OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
We ultimately opted for the Micro Focus ALM / Quality Center since it offers best in class features and good value for money.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
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:
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Easy reports
Ease of use
Ease of traceability matrix
Executions are so easy with all options of evidences tracking
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Firstly, it's a management decision to use HP Quality Center. But if you ask me why I would recommend Quality Center over other products is majorly because of automated regression testing, user interface, security/authorization restrictions and reporting features. Other …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Among a number of other tools used in our business, ALM is best for:
  • Long-term projects.
  • Waterfall projects.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
ALM/QC does not stack up too well against other lifecycle management products, in my opinion. ALM/QC does good in certain areas, such as the quick assigning of tasks to be done, but it falls short in too many areas in terms of being a realistic product to use for the different …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
We have selected ServiceNow (SNOW) in lieu of HP Application Lifecycle Management. SNOW allows complete integration into our internal corporate web-based systems where ALM does not. Because of this complete integration, we are able to provide users with a consistent user …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
This was our legacy system.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
We require a project management tool for waterfall projects with very heavy testing cycles (4-5 regression cycles), definitely no other tool in the market provides the level of support for test management that HP ALM provides.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
Quality Center does a great job on its own and is still a very competitive tool. However, with newer methodologies coming and most of the companies moving towards Agile, it requires an upgrade - without which, it will not survive. It has done a great job so far for years …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
We have not tried any other tools so it is hard to compare.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
HP is unique in its own way. We chose HP because it is standard and an end-to-end solution. However, we also use other tools for the same work that we currently do. HP is good for waterfall projects. It has an excellent defect management module.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
We require a project management tool for waterfall projects with very heavy testing cycles (4-5 regression cycles), definitely no other tool in the market provides the level of support for test management that HP ALM provides.

On the top of that, testing scope was huge, it …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
HP ALM has always been the best tool in the industry for QA management. Thoroughly trusted and used by the top-notch organization through the industry.
The USP is the total coverage of Test Cycle which other tools lack.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
JIRA, Rally. We had other HP tools for automation and because of that we decided to go with ALM QC
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
I was not responsible for selection of ALM. Given the size of the company of the client I am engaged with who is using it, I would have picked something with similar features like Rally or VersionOne. These tools are far easier to use - less clicks! The choice, however, was …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
HP Quality Center and ibm rational team concert have an option for a sync up which allows a person to automatically create a defect on rational team concert from a Quality Center note just by using a sync up button. Though HP quality centre does not give us many options to …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
There is a desire from some areas in the company to move to TFS and Microsoft Test Manager. The issue with the MS tool set is that they are more geared for developers rather than testers and business users, so great for Agile (assuming developers do carry out testing) but if …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center

For requirements, we have also reviewed Blue Print, Version One, etc. Currently, the go forward solution is being decided. Whatever the final requirements application is, integration with HP ALM will be done to support traceability.

For testing, there are a large number of …

Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
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 …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
We have had ALM back when it was called QC (Quality Center) and this was before my time, so I cannot say why it was chosen over other applications. I do know that it has been our defacto standard for many years now and all users of the program are very happy with it.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
My company used HP Quality Center so I had to use it. It was great experience.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
HP needs to have better support for agile testing as compared to JIRA. JIRA also has some powerful integration using REST APIs. Silk Test's portability enables users to test applications more effectively with lower complexity and cost in comparison to HP QC.
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
HP ALM is the best for tracking testing no questions about it, it is more robust and mature than Jira or IBM Rational. It has the capability to track not only test, requirements and even software or project development. Reports can be easily configured and produced from ALM, …
Chose OpenText ALM/Quality Center
JIRA is a web application - it is slow to load compared to the quick HP Quality Center.
Rally Software
Chose Rally Software
Rally and Asana have comparable features and are both valuable project management tools, but Asana's user interface is well-organized and highly intuitive. It's easy to add tasks and collaborators, edit due dates, indicate progress on tasks, close out projects, etc. However, …
Chose Rally Software
Overall, Rally Software is a better and more powerful tool than Jira for the same exact purposes. Jira cannot function as a requirements repository so it needs plugins or separate tools to do the same thing. There is no space or option to see all defects or user stories or …
Chose Rally Software
We have used Jira in the past. Jira is easy to use and seems to be an industry standard. Rally is clunky and expensive. The dev side did not pick it, the business did due to its reporting capabilities.
Chose Rally Software
I did not select Rally; it was chosen by the organization. If I were choosing what to use within my own team, I would use Trello. It's free, very simple to use, and has a much nicer user interface. My company previously used VersionOne however, and I prefer Rally over that …
Chose Rally Software
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) & through Test Management were two critical factors that lead to selection of CA Agile Central (formerly Rally).

Executives want to maintain trace-ability & detailed test management options like we get in ALM along with SAFe implementation support. …
Chose Rally Software
It was a close race between JAMA, JIRA and Rally. We decided to go for JAMA as a requirements management tool and use Rally for Agile projects. The cost was another factor that made us select Rally.
Chose Rally Software
Our evaluation was done many years ago, but at the time Rally provided the best mix of SCRUM-driven features, visibility and economy for our product engineering teams.
Chose Rally Software
Selected because the others seemed worse two years ago when the decision was made. VersionOne seemed ugly and too restricted. Might look better now. Microsoft TFS, now VSO, looked limited but also might look better now. Microsoft is improving it at a remarkably rapid pace. Jira …
Chose Rally Software
The process we used to select a tool was to create a scorecard of IT and Business stakeholder needs. We then reviewed seven tools and graded them against the scorecard requirements. We took the top two products and had a one day hands on demonstration with selected IT and …
Chose Rally Software
We used CA Agile Central (formerly Rally) before but recently switched to Jira. I used jira before Rally too, and I think it was easier to manage defects in Jira. Also, I think Jira is better for teams and companies that want to implement agile/scrum life cycles. It's easier to …
Chose Rally Software
We started exploring new tools, and found better adaptation of our team toward Jira. Jira provided engineers with simpler interfaces and more reliable service, even though less unnecessary features. Also the managers found in Jira better ability to eliminate noise and focus on …
Chose Rally Software
I've also evaluated the following agile solutions: ActiveCollab, Agile Bench, Agilo for Scrum, Atlassian JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, SpringGround, Targetprocess. Telerik Teamprocess, VersionOne, ZebraPlan etc.
If it’s time to transition to software that’s specific to your Agile …
Chose Rally Software
Rally has much more features with regards to the the traditional Agile methodology and has more extensive tracking features for the project managers. Pivotal tracker was used for a smaller company and smaller teams but since my current company is larger in scale and has more to …
Best Alternatives
OpenText ALM/Quality CenterRally Software
Small Businesses
Polarion ALM
Polarion ALM
Score 9.8 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Polarion ALM
Polarion ALM
Score 9.8 out of 10
Planview AgilePlace
Planview AgilePlace
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Polarion ALM
Polarion ALM
Score 9.8 out of 10
Planview AgilePlace
Planview AgilePlace
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
OpenText ALM/Quality CenterRally Software
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
3.0
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(0 ratings)
5.7
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
1.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
OpenText ALM/Quality CenterRally Software
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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If your organisation is planning to adopt Scaled Agile Framework Methodology (SAFe) without being worried about cost, CA Agile Central is one of the best tools. Here, you can look at various release trains and how that then flows up to the overall program budget. You can look holistically across all the release trains with minimal effort and have it flow up to the program office’s budget. It also helps by easily maintaining backlogs and integrating more seamlessly into software developers releases, iterations, and features. It has no conformance issue as it supports almost all the browsers like IE from version 8.0, Firefox from 3.6 and the newest versions of Chrome (from 6.0) and Safari (from 4.0).
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Pros
  • 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.
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  • structuring teams separately in a clean way. You can add as much teams as you want, and guarantee each team's work would stay separate in browsing, graphs and analytics.
  • detailed menus and drop-downs listing of features - technically it covers all there is of agile aspects and some more
  • ability to set your email notifications on/off
  • ability to split user stories into the next iteration if work isn't done in the previous one - no need to duplicate your user story manually
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Cons
  • Frequent search word/terms inside Quality Center can be prompted (Search Help).
  • Dashboard - while exporting the report, pivot table (Pre defined) selection can be made available.
  • Automated E-mail should be made available when ever a new defect is raised to relevant person/team.
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  • It is overly complicated in some views.
  • Project Filtering seems buggy. Pinning a project does not always seem to help. Seems to default back to previous projects.
  • Whereas it is great for project reporting, it is not nearly as easy as Jira for devs to use.
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Likelihood to Renew
I like the ease to use and its reliable.
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Assuming we were paying - right now my group gets it for free as the broader engineering organization pays for it. There would be switching costs. There would be pretty minimal data migration, but the biggest cost is getting people to learn a new tool and starting off on the right footing. Evaluation and identification of the right product is a big part of switching too
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Usability
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.
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Great UI, recent refresh was terrific. Great graphs and metrics, inline editing for updates, and a multitude of views on sprint progress make for a great team collaboration experience. There is also an active community and forums so that if you do need help, it is readily available
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Don’t recall ever being unavailable.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
The screens render relatively quickly but many actions that you would expect to require a single click require multiple clicks and pop-up windows. The extra windows and clicks make the product feel ponderous.
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Support Rating
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.
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I've had to use support only one time and my issue was eventually resolved but not because of my ticket--because others complained about the functionality taken away so they brought it back. My ticket was never answered or addressed. So I can't really say much for the support factor for Rally.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
It more or less confirmed that we are using it the way they had in mind. We were hoping for a epiphany in terms of how we could use it better.

They also want to be a go to source for agile processes and have an online resource center. It’s not that great but had a couple of nuggets. It hasn’t really helped us too much and we are not too far off from the classical interpretation of agile.

I would recommend training, in particular for organizations that multiple on-going projects. The product seems optimized for larger, more complex teams and getting proper training on how to configure, administer and use the system would be beneficial
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Implementation of RALLY services and program satisfaction among various group,... 1) Dev Outcomes: How were our resiliencies, development, learning & practitioners “make them do the work,” but that they ask you to do it “in a way like before. 2) The Ops group: Just wish to make sure any change won't break current production envirements All the stake holders has to be on the same page
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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Rally and Asana have comparable features and are both valuable project management tools, but Asana's user interface is well-organized and highly intuitive. It's easy to add tasks and collaborators, edit due dates, indicate progress on tasks, close out projects, etc. However, Rally's interface is somewhat cluttered and difficult to navigate. My team ended up choosing Asana over Rally due to these concerns.
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Return on Investment
  • 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.
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  • Moving from Waterfall to Scrum or Kanban has been a big win for us. The adaptability and customization of CA Agile Central has aided in our success.
  • Agile methodologies and CA Agile Central has made it easier to integrate business product owners into an agile team.
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ScreenShots