Quality Center

Quality Center was initially a test management tool developed by Mercury interactive. It is a Test Management tool. The latest version of QC is 12.01. Mercury iterative tools taken over by HP. It is now developed by HP as Application Life Cycle Management Tool (or) ALM that supports various phases of the software development life cycle. ALM is a web based tool that helps organizations to manage the application lifecycle right from project planning, requirements gathering, until testing & deployment, which otherwise is a time consuming task. It os used to design test paln, test cases , defect tracking and defect reporting. It is an upgrade version of Test Director. It has developed in J2EE and Databases  is MYSQL. IT is completely a network based tool. ALM also provides integration to all other HP products such as UFT and Load Runner.

The reason why we use Quality centre is it involves various stake holders. The various stakeholders involved in a typical project are

• Developer
• Tester
• Business Analysts
• Project Managers
• Product Owners

These stakeholders perform different variety set of activities that need to be communicated to all concerned team members involved in a project. If we do not maintain centralized repository to record, maintain and track all the artifacts related to the product, the project will undoubtedly FAIL. We also need a mechanism to document and collaborate on all testing and development activities.

The activities handled by QC are

• It enables all the stakeholders to interact and coordinate, to achieve the project goals.
• It provides robust tracking & reporting and seamless integration of various project related tasks.
• It enables detailed project analysis and effective management.
• ALM can connect to our email systems and send emails about any changes(like Requirement change, Defect raising, etc..) to all desired team members.

Evolution of ALM

It is important to understand the history of ALM.

• Quality Center was earlier known as Test Director which was developed by Mercury Interactive.
• In 2008, Version 8 was released, and the product was renamed as Quality Center.
• Later, HP acquired Mercury Interactive and rebranded all mercury products as HP.
• So Mercury Quality Center became HP Quality Center
• In 2011, Version 11 was released, and Quality center was rechristened as HP ALM.
• Now the latest version is QC ALM 12.0.