ALM Editions
Application Lifecycle Management is available in several editions which provide subsets of ALM functionality.
ALM Edition |
Description |
---|---|
ALM | A unified platform for managing and automating processes, activities, and assets for building, testing, delivering, and maintaining applications. It includes modules for requirements, test, defect, and development management, and overall release and project planning. ALM helps organizations drive consistent processes, shared best-practices, and asset sharing across projects. |
Quality Center (QC) Enterprise Edition |
QC resides on the same unified platform as ALM. It is a unified quality management platform that efficiently scales from a single project to multiple, enterprise-wide projects and releases. QC enables you to manage application quality with consistent, repeatable processes regardless of your methodology of choice, from Waterfall to iterative methodologies such as Agile. |
Quality Center (QC) Express Edition |
Provides a subset of ALM product functionality, and is designed to introduce new customers to ALM. It provides core functionality for test management and defect management. |
Quality Center (QC) Community Edition |
Provides a subset of ALM product functionality, and is designed to introduce new customers to ALM. It provides core functionality for test management and defect management. Note: Before using the community edition, you must assign named licenses to your users. Only then can the users successfully log in to ALM and see the appropriate modules. |
ALM Functionality by Edition
The following table indicates the availability of ALM functionality according to edition. Further information on each function is provided below.
Functionality | Micro Focus ALM Edition | Micro Focus Quality Center Enterprise Edition | Micro Focus Quality Center Express Edition | Micro Focus Quality Center Community Edition |
---|---|---|---|---|
Licensing | ||||
Release Management | ||||
Project Planning and Tracking (PPT) Releases
|
||||
Multiple Requirement Types | ||||
Requirement to Requirement Traceability | ||||
Risk-Based Quality Management | ||||
Business Models Module | ||||
Test Authoring and Execution | (partial) | |||
Test Resources | ||||
Test Configurations | ||||
Sprinter | ||||
Lab Management | ||||
Automatic Provisioning of Cloud Test Hosts | ||||
Versioning | ||||
Baselining | ||||
Sharing Requirements and Tests | ||||
Sharing Defects | ||||
Cross Project Customization | ||||
Cross Project Reporting | ||||
Global Search | ||||
External Integration | ||||
Export Data to Excel | ||||
Business Process Testing | ||||
Extensions | (partial) | (partial) | ||
Upgrading Editions | -- |
ALM licensing is determined according to your purchase agreement. The site administrator can manage and monitor the license usage from Site Administration.
You organize and track your upcoming releases in the Releases module. Performance Center Edition does not support release management.
For more details on the Releases module, see Releases and Cycles Overview.
ALM project planning and tracking (PPT) functionality enables quality assurance managers to track application readiness by defining goals for activities of an application release. PPT is available for ALM Edition only.
For more details on PPT releases, see PPT Releases Overview.
You can assign each requirement in the Requirements module to a default ALM requirement type. In addition, you can customize the default types and create your own requirement types. The Requirements module is not available in Quality Center Community Edition or Quality Center Express Edition.
For more details on requirement types, see Requirements Module Fields.
Requirements traceability defines a relationship between two or more requirements, assisting you when analyzing the impact of a change proposed in a specific requirement. The Requirements module is not available in Quality Center Community Edition or Quality Center Express Edition.
For more details on requirements traceability, see Requirements Traceability.
The risk-based quality management feature enables you to calculate at which level to test each requirement, based on the nature of the requirement and the resources you have available. The Requirements module is not available in Quality Center Community Edition or Quality Center Express Edition.
For more details on risk-based quality management, see Risk-Based Quality Management.
The Business Models module enables you to import business process models from standard modeling tools, and test their quality in ALM. The Business Models module is available in ALM Edition and Quality Center Enterprise Edition only.
For more details on the Business Models module, see Business Process Models.
You can build test plans and design tests based on your project requirements, and then execute those tests to diagnose and resolve problems. ALM Performance Center Edition supports performance testing only. Quality Center Community Edition supports manual testing only.
For details, see Test Plan Overview and Test Execution Overview.
The Test Resources module enables you to manage resources used by your tests.
For details, see Test Resources.
Test configurations enable testing of various use-cases, each time with a different set of data.
For details, see Test Configuration Overview.
Micro Focus Sprinter provides enhanced manual testing functionality and a variety of tools to assist in the manual testing process. Sprinter is available for ALM Edition, Quality Center Enterprise Edition, and Quality Center Express Edition.
For more details on Sprinter, see Sprinter Overview.
Lab Management allows users to manage the lab resources and systems they use for functional and performance testing in ALM. Lab Management is available for functional and performance testing with ALM Edition and for performance testing with Performance Center Edition.
For details, refer to the Micro Focus ALM Lab Management Guide.
Cloud provisioning is currently available only for provisioning of load generators.
For details, refer to the Micro Focus ALM Lab Management Guide.
Version control enables you to create and manage ALM entities while maintaining previous versions of those entities. Quality Center Community Edition and Quality Center Express Edition do not support single entity versioning of your ALM projects.
For more details on versioning, see Version Control.
You can create a baseline to store a snapshot of multiple entities in your project, at a specific point in time. Quality Center Community Edition and Quality Center Express Edition do not support baselining.
For details, see Libraries and Baselines.
The Libraries module enables you to create and compare baselines of requirements, tests, test resources, and business components. You can also reuse an existing set of entities by importing, synchronizing and comparing libraries across multiple projects.
Quality Center Enterprise Edition: You can use the Libraries module to create and compare baselines in a project. Quality Center Enterprise Edition does not include importing, synchronizing and comparing libraries across multiple projects.
Quality Center Community Edition and Quality Center Express Edition do not support sharing requirements and tests.
For more details on the Libraries module, see Libraries Module Window.
Cross project customization enables you to work with template projects to standardize policies and procedures across projects in your organization. Cross project customization is not available for Quality Center Enterprise Edition, Quality Center Community Edition, or Quality Center Express Edition.
When you create graphs in ALM, you can combine and compare data from multiple projects. Cross project reporting is unavailable for some entities. Cross project reporting is not available for Quality Center Enterprise Edition, Quality Center Community Edition, or Quality Center Express Edition.
For more details on the ALM reports and graphs, see Analysis View Window.
All editions enable searching for data across all or a specific ALM module. Globally search is available for the following modules: Defects, Requirements, Tests, Test Sets, and Analysis.
For details, see Global Search Window.
All editions enable synchronizing externally executed test results with ALM. Automation tests executed by Jenkins or other testing frameworks will be integrated into ALM along with the latest test runs, giving quality teams comprehensive quality coverage. When working with Jenkins, this integration enhances the Continuous Testing process.
For details, see Integrating External Tests.
All editions enable exporting ALM data to Excel for reporting. Exporting functionality is unavailable for some entities.
For details, see Excel Reports.
Business Process Testing enables non-technical subject matter experts to build and work with business components in a script-free environment and to create application-quality business process tests. Business Process Testing is not available for Performance Center Edition, Quality Center Community Edition, or Quality Center Express Edition.
Each user with the proper permissions who logs into an ALM server with a Business Process Testing license uses up both a Business Process Testing license and an ALM license.
Note: You can run test sets containing business process tests in the Test Lab module and you can also edit automated components in Unified Functional Testing, even if no Business Process Testing license is available in ALM.
The BPT Packaged Apps Kit is also fully integrated with ALM. It is enabled only if your ALM is licensed for Business Process Testing and BPT Packaged Apps Kit is enabled. Like Business Process Testing, BPT Packaged Apps Kit is not available for the Performance Center Edition, Quality Center Community Edition, or Quality Center Express Edition.
For details on Business Process Testing, refer to the Micro Focus Business Process Testing User Guide.
ALM extensions provide added functionality to ALM. Various extensions are available, depending on the edition with which you are working. If you have a license for an ALM extension, you can utilize the added functionality by enabling the extension on a per project basis. For more details on enabling extensions, refer to the Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management Administrator Guide
To view the list of extensions available with ALM or to download documentation for the extensions, access the ALM Add-ins Page. You can access the Add-ins page in ALM from Help > Add-ins.
You can upgrade your current edition to another edition.
For details on upgrading, refer to the Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management Installation and Upgrade Guide.