ALM Octane

Enterprise DevOps platform for continuous delivery and quality

Product Highlights

Faster Delivery, Better Quality

Micro Focus® ALM Octane provides a com-

prehensive DevOps management platform

that supports enterprise application delivery

with high-quality criteria, continuous visibility

and delivery across your entire application

lifecycle. ALM Octane accelerates Agile trans-

formations for high-quality application delivery

at enterprise scale while leveraging existing

investments. The Agile and DevOps platform

integrates with open source and third-party

solutions to support planning, build analytics,

end-to-end traceability, and rich reporting.

Key Benets

ALM Octane has many capabilities that help

application development teams deliver amaz-

ing apps fast, without compromising quality or

digital user experience. The three core aspects

that bring speed, quality, and scale for appli-

cation development, application testing, and

application delivery are highlighted as follows.

Speed

ALM Octane is architected to immediately

add value on top of widely adopted open

source developer and collaboration tools.

Teams have embraced Agile development

prac tices and are building out DevOps tool

chains leveraging powerful Git version con-

trol, Jenkins build, Azure DevOps and contin-

uous integration (CI) systems. ALM Octane

expands their value by managing not only the

Agile backlog but also providing test man-

agement solution for all types of tests. This is

needed to provide a remarkable user experi-

ence including manual and automated func-

tional tests, performance tests, defects, and

incidents both found in testing and production.

Through a rich integration with CI tools such

as Jenkins, TeamCity, and Bamboo, at any time

in the CI pipeline process, you will have a clear

and accurate view of quality and release readi-

ness against the metrics that matter most

to business.

By leveraging Git for source control and ver-

sion management of tests, testers align with

developer practices. The teams have the agil-

ity that comes from a clear view of testing

changes and versions, ready to execute or roll

back as needed.

In addition, ALM Octane provides a clear path

for manual testers to skill up and transition to a

world of dev/testing and test automation. ALM

Octane supports Gherkin for Behavior Driven

Development, a proven software develop-

ment and testing methodology that leverages

a simple, domain-specic scripting language

converting structured natural language state-

ments into executable tests. With BDD, busi-

ness analysts can write Gherkin tests clearly

reecting business requirements, and testers

can manually execute these tests or quickly

convert Gherkin tests into automated scripts

helping to accelerate the adoption of test au-

tomation. ALM Octane is designed to bridge

the gap between traditional testing activities

and developer practices to shift testing left and

adopt DevOps best practices.

Quality

ALM Octane implements continuous quality in

DevOps software delivery. ALM Octane is de-

signed for fast-moving App Dev and test teams

that are adopting CI for DevOps. Test execu-

tion is intrinsically linked to CI and results are

automatically available in ALM Octane context-

driven quality and defect management dash-

boards or linked to contextual conversations

Data Sheet

Application Delivery Management

Quick View

ALM Octane is a comprehensive lifecycle

management solution focused on enhancing the

speed, quality, and scale of delivering software

for organizations adopting Lean, Agile, and DevOps

delivery practice.

Online ALM Octane help center

ALM Octane Practitioners Forum

Micro Focus Live Network

Data Sheet

ALM Octane

in #ChatOps systems such as Slack. In addi-

tion, ALM Octane manages the relationships

between all the moving parts in a DevOps

pipeline. Teams can dene their applications

in modules that:

■ Reect architecture and dependencies

■ Dene user stories and tests that align

to application modules

■ Code and test in pipelines

Moreover, at any time know the status of test-

ing results and defects aligned to particular

builds in the pipeline or correlated up to the

overall application module to get a compre-

hensive view of quality.

ALM Octane DevOps ALM solution is integrated

with development and code quality solutions

(such as Micro Focus Security Fortify Static

Code Analyzer [SCA]) such that when code is

checked in, it can be analyzed for code quality.

ALM Octane is fully integrated with continu-

ous integration infrastructure (such as Jenkins,

TeamCity and Bamboo). This enables the re-

sults of the build tasks and automated func-

tional, performance, and security tests (such

as those automated by Micro Focus LeanFT,

Micro Focus StormRunner Load, and Micro

Focus Security Fortify WebInspect) be re-

ported in intelligent ways to the teams who

need to act on the results.

Testing and quality insights are reected and

related to the builds, pipelines, and application

modules in ALM Octane so that Agile teams

can continuously assess the state of quality in

the sprint. ALM Octane also relates quality and

testing state to application architecture—via

application components or modules—assess-

ing if quality can meet denition of done.

In addition, ALM Octane captures the testing

and quality data. It can enable a wide array of

prebuilt and custom graphs and reports are

created and rendered to align to KPIs, trends,

and highest impact areas. Over time, we plan to

continue to apply Big Data analytics against all

this data. This is also done so that predictions

can be available to make adjustments to con-

tinuously increase quality and lower risk.

Scale

ALM Octane is designed for transformative

hybrid infrastructure. What do we mean by

that? ALM Octane provides insight, analysis,

management, automation, and orchestration

for all aspects of application quality including

user experience, functionality, performance,

and security. Our solutions support all Software

Development Lifecycle (SDLC) methodolo-

gies including Waterfall, Agile, and DevOps

for continuous delivery as well as the needs

of enterprises globally transitioning to hybrid

infrastructure. These include on-premises,

private cloud, as-a-service, and cloud-native

platforms and delivery models.

With enterprise scalability and support, we are

leveraging over a decade of industry leader-

ship supporting the enterprise. With ALM and

Micro Focus Quality Center, we have archi-

tect scalability, enterprise credential support,

cross-project sharing and visibility, and exible

methodology support to the ALM Octane plat-

form. Teams can start small and know that as

they grow, the underlying technology will sup-

port them along the way.

When you are looking for scale, ALM Octane is

designed intrinsically for hybrid cloud—to run

as software as a service (SaaS) managed by

Micro Focus or on-premises. Moreover, ALM

Octane is an enterprise-class platform, with

support for customized business rules, user-

defined fields, and a Swagger documented

Representational State Transfer (REST) ap-

plication program interface (API) that is lever-

aged to integrate with full lifecycle services.

With ALM Octane integrations, teams can col-

laborate rapidly through ChatOps and immedi-

ately reect them in backlogs and Agile sprints,

helping the DevOps continuous assessment

feedback loop so vital to achieving consistent

quality in a rapidly changing landscape. ALM

provides Application Lifecycle Intelligence,

which brings in data from SCM providers (Git,

SVN, so on), CI servers (Jenkins, Bamboo,

TeamCity), and monitoring tools (New Relic,

AppDynamics). ALM Octane embeds a real-

time pipeline view for continuous testing and

continuous integration processes.

ALM Octane leverages modern ways of main-

taining relationships between lifecycle ac-

tivities and artifacts. It drives focus in teams

with tagging and intelligent search so that

teams can rapidly nd the information needed

to collaborate on quality and code readiness

at any time.

Features

Plan: Predictable application delivery requires

awareness of progress and alignment with

goals and milestones, as well as the ability to

access updated information without relying

on error-prone manual data gathering. ALM

Octane platform allows teams to assess the

status quickly within their context and access

the right data to make the correct decisions.

When beginning a product, and on a continual

basis, the product owner creates and main-

tains the product backlog. The Backlog is uid,

always adjusting to changing priorities.

In ALM Octane, the backlog is maintained in the

Backlog module (see Figure 1). Use the Backlog

module to:

Figure 1. Backlog view within ALM Octane

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■ Create Epics that specify the large-scale

part of your applications

■ Create Features for each deliverable part

of the product

■ Create Stories for each item that must

be developed

■ Organize Epics, Features, and Stories

in a meaningful way that displays your

product development logic and hierarchy

Once you have created the product backlog

structure, you can decide when to develop and

release dierent items.

Dene: Understanding business needs is the

most critical piece of data any project team

can have. ALM Octane has integrated Agile

user stories and backlog management directly

into the ALM software platform. Through this,

teams can quickly document business needs

and map them to supporting artifacts in the

software development lifecycle, such as de-

fects or tests. When planning a release or a

sprint or development period, eective plan-

ning requires you to assign the correct amount

of work for the capacity in these periods

(see Figure 2).

To help you determine and assign work ac-

cordingly, each team is assigned a sprint ve-

locity, which determines the overall release

capacity. In parallel with this, each story (user

story, quality story, and defect) is estimated in

story points. When you complete these esti-

mations, you can better create optimal work

plans for a release and sprint.

Build: High-velocity teams realize that a quick

understanding of what went into a build and

where to triage is an eective means to faster

application delivery. ALM Octane integrates

directly into your Jenkins CI and build envi-

ronment, so you can quickly view release and

quality pipelines, as well as adjust as new or

changing validations and regression tests are

created (see Figure 3).

Test: Consistent quality is critical in any ap-

plication being delivered to support your

business. ALM Octane platform allows you to

author tests using Gherkin (see Figure 4), as-

sists in the conversion of automated scripts,

and manages the execution of your test suites.

You may also manual test by dening step by

step. Whether you’re planning your tests within

the context of a CI pipeline or executing re-

gression tests on the y, with ALM software,

you can view aggregated quality within the

context of your entire application.

Track: Whether you want to log a defect—

quickly and easily—during a regression test,

or review the status of a test or user story,

ALM Octane provides information tailored to

your context. Customizable reports, graphs,

and dashboards (see Figure 5) help the team

stay on top of critical items and with prioritiza-

tion. The dashboard is the control center for

analysis of your application’s development

and quality. It gives a visual, customizable dis-

play of how the application’s development is

progressing and the level of quality. When you

add widgets, you can control the information

shown in the dashboard such as the type of

data reported, the scope, and time frame, and

how the data is grouped and displayed. In one

dashboard, you have complete visibility of all

aspects of a project, release, or application—

from progress to quality.

Embracing open source: ALM software con-

tinues to embrace open source standards and

tools within the framework. You can author

tests using Gherkin, support test automation

management of Selenium scripts, which is

based on a Git-architected back-end platform,

and tightly integrate with your team’s Jenkins

build environment.

Business rules: To allow teams to provision

workspaces and environments quickly, as well

as simplify the administration of the system,

ALM Octane introduces visual business rules.

This helps teams to control access, enforce

process and workow, and to align with team

priorities consistently. The most beneficial

process assistance comes through produc-

tive guidance, rather than obstructive blocking.

Figure 2. Team Backlog view within ALM Octane

Figure 3. Pipeline view within ALM Octane

Figure 4. Gherkin test view within ALM Octane

Figure 5. Dashboard view within ALM Octane

Asset sharing, reuse, and tagging: Being

able to share similar artifacts between teams

or projects doesn’t just help save time and

lower risk but is a very common reality for

many teams today. Using application modules

within ALM Octane, teams can easily assign

tests, defects, and user stories to a specic

application release, and can use custom tag-

ging that quickly lters and views items across

the lifecycle.

Learn more at

microfocus.com/alm-octane

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marks are the property of their respective owners.

www.microfocus.com

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