Micro Focus ALM / Quality Center Integration
What is Micro Focus ALM / Quality Center
Micro Focus ALM / Quality Center
is an enterprise platform for software development. It has functionality that helps firms track requirements, manage projects, track defects, monitor test coverage, and support deployments. It was formerly known as HP QC/ALM, but was purchased as part of Micro Focus' acquisition of HPE's software business in 2017.
Outcome / Why we're not integrating
[@deuley, 2020-05-14] We will not be integrating with Micro Focus ALM / Quality Center unless significant customer demand arises at a later date. While this was a market leader at one time in this space, it's currently very much viewed as a "legacy" tool, and without significant improvements to the software, will likely see customers continuing to flock off of the platform.
It's not currently marketed heavily by Micro Focus themselves, and based on a job-skills report from Indeed, is the 11th "sharpest declining tech skill" from 2014-2019, seeing a 63% decrease in mentions in job listings posted to that platform. As of that writing (Nov 2019), only 0.1% of job postings include it as a keyword, indicating a very small market share at this time.
While it's certainly possible Micro Focus may re-invest in ALM / Quality Center at a later date, it's more likely that they'll focus instead on the more modern ALM Octane (formerly HPE ALM Octane) and Project and Portfolio Management (formerly HPE PPM) products instead. As the market shifts toward Agile and Devops focused methodologies, we should expect to see the associated shift toward using similar tools that suit these needs better.
From the customer demand perspective, as of this writing we have seen only one direct request in the last year, and a total of eight in the last three. Many of these requestors are current customers, so a lack of this integration does not appear to be a significant blocker to adoption.
Possible integration concepts
- GitLab integration with HP Quality Center and ALM
- Link to a GitLab merge request while inside a Requirement or Defect in HPQC/ALM.
- Link to (or provide an ID) of the Requirement/Defect in a GitLab merge request.
- Close/finish the Requirement/Defect when the GitLab merge request is completed.
- Aggregate all the merge requests associated with a Requirement in HPQC/ALM into a report.
- Provide a coverage/traceability report.
Interested customers/prospects
-
https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/00161000006fkPe(2016-11) -
https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/0066100000EF1Xd(2017-03) -
https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/0016100000eLmXi(2017-05) -
https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/00361000016mCPb(2017-05) -
https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/00161000004xUPr(2017-05) -
https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/00161000002xBZG(2017-06) - https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/00161000002xr6m (2018-12)
- https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/0016100000cRBBM (2019-12)
Note: I've struck-through links to customers where where the request was greater than three years old and no follow-up was seen since the original request.