I am an experienced software developer and team leader. Lately, I joined a project in which I am supposed to manager the QA process. My team will be composed of Software Engineer in Test members since we would like to be able to run most of the testing tasks using a home grown test automation solution. We are developing the automation framework using C#.
I have started to look out for tools that will help me collect data and understand the overall status of the project and reflect that status to my manager. I saw that another project on our company works with HP Quality Center (QC) to do the same tasks. They also develop in C#. The other team developed their own automation suite and they have written a tool to update their QC test plan status with the result they got from the automation tests using an API called OTA. Their solution seems clumsy to me since they run an entire suite of tests an update QC at the end of this suite. This way they loose the real time updates QC provides.
All of this renders QC as an obstacle rather than a helper since we will have to maintain code that does not relate to our business. On the other hand, QC has other advantages. For example, Integration with JIRA, Managing Test Cycles, Record/Playback for tasks we will not be able to automate (UI testing).
My end goal is to be able to write my automation framework in C#, Be able to run my tests from as a first class citizen in the tool I am using, collect the test results my automation framework produces and gain the traceability QC suggests it provides.
My questions: 1. From your experience would you use QC if you were in my situation? 2. If you were in my position and can point me to resources that can help me perform my task I would appreciate it.