10 Best ALM Testing Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
With so many different ALM testing software available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to plan, execute, and track your software testing more efficiently, but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different ALM testing tools with a variety of teams and projects, with my picks of the best ALM testing software.
What Is ALM Testing Software?
ALM testing software is a component of Application Lifecycle Management systems, focusing specifically on the testing phase of software development. These tools facilitate the planning, execution, and tracking of software tests, ensuring they align with the application's development and maintenance processes. ALM testing software integrates testing activities into the broader application lifecycle, encompassing requirement analysis, development, deployment, and support.
The benefits of ALM testing software include improved efficiency and organization in the testing process. These tools enhance the quality assurance of software by ensuring comprehensive test coverage and alignment with user requirements. They aid in effective bug tracking and resolution, streamline collaboration across development teams, and provide valuable insights through detailed reporting and analytics. Utilizing ALM testing software helps maintain consistency throughout the software development lifecycle and supports data-driven decision-making.
Overviews Of The 10 Best ALM Testing Software
Below, you’ll find an overview of each of the 10 best ALM testing software with screenshots, key feature highlights, pricing, and pros and cons.
Best ALM testing software for gaining end-to-end visibility into work
Targetprocess enables businesses to achieve enterprise agility by providing the visibility and alignment they need to make better decisions, deliver more value, and scale agile across the enterprise.
Why I picked Targetprocess: It provides end-to-end visibility into work, resource assignments, and budgets. This helps you identify critical issues quickly and implement measures to fix them before they impact your project significantly. Targetprocess lets you visualize everything, customize the display of vital information, and make better decisions by tracking the status of work items.
The tool enables you to keep track of changes on work items with live updates. As a result, you can easily track progress and keep everyone on the same page. Targetprocess comes with advanced communication features that allow you to comment on work items, send email notifications, and keep everyone informed by sharing real-time boards.
Targetprocess Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include ranking and prioritization capabilities, which empower you to organize work and manage your teams according to your needs. This ALM software lets you prioritize incoming tasks automatically using CD3, WSJF, or MoSCoW. It also allows you to automate work item prioritization using your own custom requirements.
You can see who is working on what at any time and distribute tasks properly to avoid getting some team members overwhelmed with work while others are not busy. Targetprocess helps you maintain agility with any combination of Scrum, Kanban, or their preset work solutions. You can customize everything to match your needs or methodology.
Integrations include Apache Ant, Maven, Bamboo, Bitbucket, Jira Service Manager, Zephyr, Rally Software, AppDynamics, Digital.ai, and GitHub.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Advanced communication features
- Customizable workflows
- Seamless integrations
Cons:
- New users need better tutorials
- Beginners get overwhelmed by the many features
Best ALM testing software for requirements and risk management
Codebeamer is an application lifecycle management software that is designed to help you build better applications faster. Codebeamer offers a suite of ALM features, including requirements management, risk management, and test tracking.
Why I picked Codebeamer: Codebeamer provides traceability, transparency, and efficient collaboration in requirements management. It enables you to identify, manage, and keep track of requirements. The software streamlines work, provides clarity in requirements management, and helps you get things done cost effectively. Additionally, it enables you to simplify compliance, reduce risks, enhance product quality, and deliver faster.
Codebeamer Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features: Codebeamer’s risk management feature makes it stand out from top alternatives. It helps you identify, analyze, and reduce or avoid risks efficiently. Codebeamer gives you access to risk identification, collaborative risk analysis, integrated risk management, and documentation and reporting capabilities.
Integrations include Microsoft Excel, Slack, Microsoft 365, GitHub, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, MATLAB, Microsoft Azure, and Bitbucket.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- It supports collaboration
- Helps you meet compliance requirements
- It’s feature-rich
Cons:
- Shorter customer service response time required
- The user management feature needs to be improved
Tuleap is an all-in-one application lifecycle management solution. It comes with a wide range of features, including agile and project management, product management, issue tracking, test management, document management, and continuous development.
Why I picked Tuleap: I added this tool to the list because it’s an all-in-one solution, featuring what you need to manage your software project from planning and development to testing and issue tracking. It helps you plan, track, code, and collaborate on software projects. With the collaboration features, your teams can work together productively toward a common goal.
Tuleap is very customizable. You can easily make changes or overhaul your workflow without advanced skills. The software is designed to allow you to tailor your workspaces to your industry and needs.
Tuleap Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include document management and program management. Tuleap offers a Program Management plugin, which helps you coordinate your agile teams from business strategy to delivery. It provides ready-to-use templates to streamline work and make everyone stay aligned with synchronized workspaces.
With Tuleap’s document management feature, you can create, store, link, and version documents with ease. It has advanced document management features, including centralized project documentation, document review, access control, tracking updates with notifications, and sharing documents securely.
Integrations include GitLab, Jira Software, Eclipse, Mattermost, Bugzilla, and Jenkins.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Secure document sharing
- Very customizable
- An all-in-one tool
Cons:
- Customer support response time could be improved
- Beginners could be overwhelmed by the many features
Azure DevOps Server provides a suite of software delivery tools that empower you to share code, keep track of work, and ship high-performance applications.
Why I picked Azure DevOps Server: I selected this ALM platform because it provides software project tracking features that help you manage your product’s lifecycle from planning and coding to testing, issue management, and delivery. It offers Azure Boards, which enable you to plan, track, and discuss work across your teams. Azure Boards helps you to manage work using Kanban boards, backlogs, team dashboards, and customizable reports.
With Azure Boards, you gain insights into the health and status of your project with advanced analytics solutions and customizable dashboards. This helps you manage your project with data-driven decisions.
Azure DevOps Server Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features: Azure DevOps Server offers a range of software development solutions, including Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts. It has all you need to build a successful product from start to finish. You can use all the Azure DevOps services or just settle with the ones you need to support your existing workflows.
Azure Pipelines lets you build, test, and deploy with CI/CD that is compatible with any environment, coding language, or cloud. Azure Test Plans allows you to use manual and exploratory testing to improve quality. Azure Repos provides unlimited, cloud-hosted private Git repos, while you can easily add artifacts to your CI/CD pipelines with the help of Azure Artifacts.
Integrations include TeamSupport, Targetprocess, Time Doctor, Datadog, Productboard, timeBro, Userback, SwaggerHub, Jama Connect, and Applivery.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Get started for free
- Flexible pricing
- An all-in-one ALM solution
Cons:
- Complex configurations
- Steep learning curve
Rally Software is designed to help enterprises gain agility at scale. It comes with a range of features that give you the visibility, adaptability, and predictability you require to track your software project from beginning to delivery.
Why I picked Rally: It gives you access to agile metrics that tell you how your teams are performing. This insight helps you improve team efficiency, reduce waste, and increase the value delivered. The metric charts include Flow Predictability, Flow Efficiency, Flow Velocity, Flow Load, and Flow Time.
Rally provides real data that helps you make quality decisions. There are Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) features that enable you to set goals, organize your teams, and get them to align around the same goals. The tool offers the clarity and insights you need to understand what’s going on per time, track OKRs, and ensure that the most pressing tasks are being completed.
Rally Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features: It offers an advanced project tracking feature that allows teams to plan collaboratively, rank tasks, and track work effectively. Teams can visualize what they’re doing in different forms (lists, boards, or timeline views) to ensure their day-to-day work aligns with the common goals.
Rally helps you identify and fix issues on time by providing visibility into bottlenecks. There are cumulative flow diagrams that enable you to track work progress, making it possible to spot process bottlenecks before they morph into bigger problems. Other exceptional features of this software include custom dashboards, capacity planning, and capacity forecast metrics.
Integrations include Bamboo, GitHub, CloudBees, Jenkins, ServiceNow DevOps, Salesforce, Zendesk, Atlassian Jira, Applitools Eyes, Git, and Micro Focus.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Great collaboration features
- Complete visibility
- Discover issues before they impact your project
Cons:
- More customizations needed
- It gets laggy sometimes
Polarion provides one unified solution for managing your application’s lifecycle. It lets you connect teams and projects and offers the tooling you need to manage your software project, from requirements and coding to testing and release.
Why I picked Polarion: I recommend this software because it comes with a complete suite of features for managing the lifecycle of your product. It allows you to create and edit live reports, which display important data, KPIs, and charts. The reports are very customizable. Polarion enables you to easily communicate with teams with the help of live, customizable reports.
It features a powerful testing environment, which empowers you to test and validate products. The test management capability enables you to create test cases and connect them to their corresponding work items.
Polarion Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include change management and regulatory compliance with traceability. Polarion helps you pass any audit, compliance, or regulatory inspection with traceability. It’s designed to help users in safety-critical industries (such as medical equipment, aerospace, and automotive) meet regulatory standards. With the change management feature, you can easily adapt to changes and keep track of every change with full traceability of all modifications.
Integrations: Polarion allows you to integrate with other tools, including Tricentis Tosca, Semiant, and SOX.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Flexible and scalable
- Advanced reporting
- Lengthy free trial period
Cons:
- More customizations required
- Document editing needs to be upgraded
Helix ALM helps you deliver quality products faster with its suite of ALM tools. From tracing requirements to managing tests and tracking issues, Helix ALM provides the application lifecycle management functionalities you need to get things done properly.
Why I picked Helix ALM: The software helps you meet compliance requirements by creating a traceability matrix. This allows you to connect requirements to test cases and issues, making keeping track of activities across your development lifecycle very easy.
Helix ALM has outstanding requirements management features, which let you keep everyone in the loop with the latest requirements. You can create and share requirements documents, execute requirements reviews, get approvals, and reuse requirements across projects.
Helix ALM Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include automated workflows and risk management. The software enables you to get more done in less time with automated workflows. You don’t have to track what your teams are doing manually. The automation engine handles states, events, transitions, assignment rules, escalation rules, and more.
With risk management capability, identify and manage risks before they impact your project or bottom line. Helix ALM allows you to create requirements based on risk, conduct risk assessments, and avoid the risk that comes with being non-compliant.
Integrations include Jira, Unreal Engine, Jenkins, IntelliJ IDEA, Slack, Unity, ActiveState, AWS, Lumberyard, and Maven.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Reliable metrics and reports
- Automated issue tracking
- Seamless integrations
Cons:
- Some things are difficult to set up
- More widgets required
Best low- and no-code application lifecycle management solution
This software helps you create high-performance, next-generation experiences with application modernization. It helps you increase business agility, boost performance and productivity, and simplify compliance and audit demands.
Why I picked Rocket ALM: This tool lets you build and deploy high-quality software using low- and no-code development. Rocket ALM streamlines the entire process and reduces the technical requirements for building modernized products. The low- and no-code capabilities enable you to deploy code at speed and scale, save time, and reduce the costs of delivering the best products and experiences possible.
Rocket ALM Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features: Rocket ALM’s DevOps capability allows you to automate tasks. This helps you get more done in less time by enabling your teams to automate tasks and focus more on work items that require intensive human involvement. With Rocket ALM, you can automate workloads across hybrid infrastructures, reduce compliance risks, streamline information access and usage, and optimize workload performance.
Integrations: It lets you integrate with other third-party software development tools.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- No-code solution
- Automation features
- Scalability
Cons:
- Limited customizations
- More product information needed
Best ALM testing solution for improving collaboration
IBM Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management provides integrations across the Change and Configuration Management, Requirements Management, and Quality Management Jazz applications. It’s designed to bring together the work of analysts with development and test teams.
Why I picked Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management by IBM: It fosters collaboration among project teams. This Collaboration Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution by IBM connects the work of analysts with development and test teams. CLM integrations provide collaborative workflows that enable teams to share information, send feedback, and work productively on projects.
Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management by IBM Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features: IBM Rational CLM lets you link artifacts for traceability and web-like navigation, build reports, and create dashboards across CLM applications. Test cases can be linked to work items and requirements. Testers can keep tabs on the status of an issue they’ve reported to the development team. The software provides tracking capabilities that allow you to keep track of status across projects.
Integrations: Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management by IBM allows you to integrate with other software development tools.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easily link test cases to work items
- Track status across projects
- Improved collaboration
Cons:
- Difficult configurations
- More product information required
Best for meeting compliance requirements in safety-critical industries
Visure Solutions provides application lifecycle management functionalities that enable you to build complex products and systems in safety-critical industries. The software helps you meet compliance requirements and boost your project success rate.
Why I picked Visure Solutions: It has outstanding requirements management features, which help you to keep track of requirements history and versioning at the element and document level. The requirements management capabilities include element tracking, change management, impact analysis, and prioritization.
Visure Solutions makes test management very easy and straightforward. There is a test management dashboard that gives you access to insights you need to make good decisions and implement changes across projects.
Visure Solutions Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features: Visure Solutions offers a risk management feature that lets you mitigate risk and avoid compliance-related challenges across projects. It achieves this by providing an all-in-one centralized application lifecycle management solution.
It makes reusability and traceability between projects possible. Your team can optimize resources and cut down costs by reusing components from work items within the platform. This helps you streamline your workflows and makes keeping track of things easier.
Integrations include Jira, IBM DOORS, Microsoft Word and Excel, GitLab, ReqIF, Azure DevOps, Rapita Systems, Cameo, and MATLAB Simulink.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- End-to-end traceability
- Seamless integrations
- Good reporting
Cons:
- Some configurations are time-consuming
- Making custom report templates is cumbersome
The 10 Best ALM Testing Software Summary
Tools | Price | |
---|---|---|
Targetprocess | From $20/user/month | Website |
codebeamer | From $125/user/month | Website |
Tuleap | $6.46/user/month (min. 10 users) | Website |
Azure DevOps Server | Pricing upon request | Website |
Rally Software | Pricing upon request | Website |
Polarion | Pricing upon request | Website |
Perforce Helix ALM | From $89/month | Website |
Rocket Application Lifecycle Management | Pricing upon request | Website |
Rational Collaborative Lifecycle Management by IBM | Pricing upon request | Website |
Visure Solutions | Pricing upon request | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareOther Options
Here are a few good options that didn’t make the best ALM testing software list:
Selection Criteria For ALM Testing Software
Here’s a summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best ALM testing software for this article:
Core Functionality
In the course of research and evaluation, I looked out for the following core functionalities:
- Portfolio management
- Project management
- Test management
- Issue management
- Workflow automation
Key Features
I considered the following major features:
- Reporting: Reporting and analytics capabilities help you keep track of everything by providing up-to-date information through the dashboards.
- Work items tracking: This feature allows you to keep an eye on work items. It enables you to know who is working on what and track the status of tasks.
- Collaboration: It empowers teams to work together on tasks, regardless of their locations. ALM testing platforms with advanced collaboration tools provide communication features, such as commenting on work items, sharing email notifications, and live chat.
- Task ranking: This is a task management feature that lets you prioritize tasks based on importance. It helps you get the most pressing tasks out of the way before giving attention to others.
Usability
I recommended solutions that are easy to use and maintain. No team wants to spend weeks trying to figure out how to get started with new software. Consequently, each ALM testing software should have an excellent user interface, detailed documentation, step-by-step tutorials, and a responsive customer support platform.
Software Integrations
Software integrations help you connect to your toolset. And using a tool that lets you integrate with other software enables you to streamline your workflow and get things done faster. All the tools on my list allow software integrations. You can integrate continuous integration/continuous delivery tools, defect tracking systems, test case management tools, and more.
Pricing
I believe that flexible, friendly, and transparent pricing is an attribute of a good software solution. With this in mind, I looked out for ALM testing systems that offer value for money. Go through my list carefully, and you'll find a good product that has friendly pricing that suits your needs and budget.
People Also Ask
Some key questions that people ask about ALM testing software:
What are the benefits of ALM testing software?
The benefits of ALM testing solutions include facilitating data-based decision-making, improving application development speed and agility, boosting quality and compliance, efficient enterprise planning, and extensive visibility across the project lifecycle.
Who uses ALM testing software?
Developers, QA engineers, project managers, and anyone involved in a software development project can use an ALM testing system. It helps them to manage the development of a product, from planning and requirements management to development, testing, delivery, and maintenance.
Is ALM similar to JIRA?
ALM is similar to Jira. Better put, Jira is one of the best ALM tools — it’s recommended above. Jira is a leading ALM testing solution you should check out if you’re looking for a versatile ALM solution.
Other Testing Software
Check out the following reviews if you want to learn more about software testing tools.
- Best API testing tools
- Best Bug Tracking Tools
- Best Open-Source Test Management Tools
- Best Exploratory Testing Tools
Final Thoughts
You need good ALM testing software if you’re looking to build a successful product cost-effectively and without unnecessary delays. Your development methodologies and project needs are different based on the type of product you’re building. As a result, you have to look out for the best ALM testing solution that matches your needs. I’ve recommended the best tools on the market; evaluate my list to find the most suitable one for you.
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