GitLab
vs
Micro Focus ALM Octane
vs
Decision Kit
Decision Kit
Summary
Micro Focus, which purchased the software business unit of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, has ALM Octane, that has both on-premise technologies and SaaS-based offerings. ALM Octane is a web-based application lifecycle management platform that enables teams to collaborate easily, manage the product delivery pipeline, and visualize the impact of changes.
GitLab enables portfolio planning and management through epics, groups (programs) and milestones to organize and track progress. Regardless of your methodology from Waterfall to DevOps, GitLab’s simple and flexible approach to planning meets the needs of small teams to large enterprises. GitLab helps teams organize, plan, align and track project work to ensure teams are working on the right things at the right time and maintain end to end visibility and traceability of issues throughout the delivery lifecycle from idea to production.
Gaps
ALM Octane doesn’t include built-in CI/CD, SCM and IDE, therefore integrations with third-party tools are required for the complete software development lifecycle. In contrast, GitLab is a complete DevOps platform, delivered as a single application. From project planning and source code management to CI/CD, monitoring, and security.
Comments/Anecdotes
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From IT Central Station ALM Octane customer: “When I manage projects that are being created in ALM, I have a standard template, but I don’t have a template for them in Octane. I literally have to create the project from the ground up every time, which for an administrator, is a nightmare solution”. In contrast, Gitlab allows creating projects from template, more details.
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From IT Central Station ALM Octane customer: “The Requirements Module could be better, to build up a better requirements process. There’s a huge improvement from ALM.NET to Octane, but it’s still not really facilitating all the needs of the product owners, to set up their requirements in Octane”.
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From TechValid ALM Octane Senior consulted: “The Jenkins dashboard (pipeline overview) is amazing. I have shown customers who have a strong anti-HPE bias and they were blown away by that feature alone”.
Resources
Feature Comparison
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Issues
Quickly set the status, assignee or milestone for multiple issues at the same time or easily filter them on any properties. See milestones and issues across projects. |
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Description Templates
By adding a description template to your issues or merge requests, users who create a new issue or merge request can select a template to help them to communicate effectively. |
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File Attachments
Upload file attachments (including images) to issues, merge requests, and epics, to communicate ideas beyond text. |
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Labels
Labels provide an easy way to categorize issues, merge requests, or epics based on descriptive titles as ‘bug’, or ‘documentation’. |
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Issue Weights
GitLab lets you manage issues using Agile practices by setting the weight of an issue. |
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Milestones
Create and manage milestones at both the project and group levels, viewing all the issues for the milestone you’re currently working on, representing an Agile program increment or a release. |
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Iterations
Create and manage iterations at the group level, view all the issues for the iteration you’re currently working on within your group or project, and enable all subgroups and projects to stay in sync on the same cadence. |
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Issue Due Dates
In GitLab, you can set a due date for individual issues. This is very convenient if you have small tasks with a specific deadline. |
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Assignee
Assign a user to an issue or a merge request, indicating responsibility for it. |
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Burnup Charts
With Milestone and Iteration Burnup Charts, you can better understand scope change during a sprint or while working on a new version of your software. |
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Burndown Charts
GitLab provides Burndown Charts as part of Milestones and Iterations. This allows users to better track progress during a sprint or while working on a new version of their software. |
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Drag and Drop Tasks
Drag and drop tasks in a task list. |
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Issue Board Label Lists
An Issue Board is based on its project’s label structure, therefore, it applies the same descriptive labels to indicate placement on the board. GitLab issues can appear on multiple issues and they still have meaning without the context of a particular board. |
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Issue Board Configuration
Associate a board with a milestone, labels, an assignee, and a weight |
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DevOps Pipeline
Able to establish visibility into the end to end DevOps pipeline so the entire team is aware of pipeline status and can contribute to overall success. |
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Requirements Management
With Requirements Management you are able to gather, document, refine, and track approval of business and system requirements. Manage and track the relationships between requirements and other requirements, requirements and code, or requirements and test cases for each version of requirements. Specific features will include definition, traceability, and requirement hierarchy and dependency. |
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Satisfy Requirements from CI/CD pipelines
This powerful feature uses the GitLab single-application model to allow testing run in the CI/CD pipelines to satisfy your requirements. This automates the cumbersome task of identifying satisfied requirements, and enables your organization to focus on delivering value. |
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Import & Export Requirements
To better collaborate with external groups and organizations, requirements can be imported and exported in CSV format. This allows teams to use a single interface for development and testing against requirements. |
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Quality Management
Able to support test planning, definition of test cases, results of test execution and corresponding backlog of work resulting from failed tests. Specific features would include: Test case planning, test execution, defect tracking (backlog), severity, priority. |
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Create test cases from within GitLab
Create and view test cases from within GitLab. This allows for seamless collaboration between contributors. |
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Service Desk
Allow external users to create issues in your GitLab instance without an account and without access to anything except their issue. Manage tickets from the GitLab interface. |
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Service Desk Custom Branding
Allow customization of incoming issues and response emails, including the service desk user name to allow for a cohesive branding experience for your customers. |
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Portfolio Management
Plan and track work at the project and portfolio level. Manage capacity and resources together with Portfolio Management. |
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Wiki based project documentation
A separate system for documentation called Wiki, is built right into each GitLab project. Every Wiki is a separate Git repository. |
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Design Management
Design Management allows users to upload design assets (such as wireframes and mockups) to GitLab Issues and keep them stored in one single place, giving product designers, managers, and engineers a seamless way to collaborate on design proposals. They can be easily uploaded and are stored in versions. You can start a thread by clicking on the image on the exact location you would like the discussion to be focused on. |
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GitLab-Figma Plugin
Our Figma plugin allows you to upload Figma frames and components to GitLab issues. |
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AD / LDAP integration
Sync groups, manage SSH-keys, manage permissions, authentication and more. You can manage an entire GitLab instance through the LDAP / AD integration. |
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Mattermost integration
Mattermost can be automatically installed and integrated using GitLab Omnibus |
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