QC or Software Planner? this is the question
For the last 5 years, all my previous and current jobs implied working with HP Quality Center aka ‘The Turtle’ (I think you know why) as a project management tool. But not long ago, I had the chance to review and try to manage a project from a totally different perspective, called Software Planner (the perspective, not the project 
).
Let’s start with a short comparison like the old fashioned way:
| Area | Software Planner | Quality Center |
| Company | AutomatedQA | Hewlett-Packard |
| Web Client | Internet Explorer 6,7 & 8, Mozilla Firefox | Internet Explorer 6 & 7, QC Web |
| Software as a Service | Yes | Yes |
| Manage application project lifecycle and QA test phases | Yes | Yes |
| Integration with Test Tools | Yes ( Test Complete) | Yes (Quick Test Pro) |
| Requirements Traceability and Reporting | Yes – Great graphs | Yes – Great graphs |
| Defect & Issue Management | Yes | Yes |
| Support Ticket Management | Yes | No |
| Shared Documents | Yes | Yes |
| Discussion Forum | Yes | No |
| Project Methodology Independent | Yes | Difficult to use when playing Agile |
| Future Product Versions price | Free | $$$$$ |
| Support and Documentation | ***** | *** |
From my perspective, both tools offer all major features and functionality to help you run projects accordingly, but still, I tend to migrate to SoftwarePlanner and not because I’m sick of QC. It’s about the little details that always make the difference.
QC can be accessed only by using IE browser, so Linux fans, forget about using it 
. Here a common scenario: You are using QC 9 for your projects, your workstation runs IE 7. you sit one morning at your desk and notice that Windows Live Update just ran and you now have IE 8….Ooops, IE 8 not supported, you can no longer login into QC. Strike 1.
When you try to access QC for the first time, you need to wait for all the plugins and activex to be installed. by the time they are all done, your IE will crash at least 3 times. Strike 2
Try to import Excel testcases into QC. You’ll need to install QC Plugin for Excel, select the testcase, map columns and if your spreadsheet has more than 100 lines, it’ll most probably crash. Strike 3. QC out!
So we get to Software planner. You don’t need plugins to install, supports all types of browsers even from Linux boxes, and the Excel import is done from the main application window so no need to worry about plugins.
Few things I enjoyed while working and administrating SoftPlanner app, was the Email Alert management page, the variety of Reports you can run for tracking purposes and the detailed Requirements page which gives you a detailed, still customizable, overview of what has been/is to be/will be done on your project. I captured some print screen for further details.
I still have one question for the Software Planner guys. Is there any reason why you didn’t mask the password when creating a new user?
Enjoy!