Actually, you might not need a service account on the HP/HPE/Microfocus Application Lifecycle Management service at all.

A SPECIFIC service account user is required for 2 reasons:

1. You are using SQL-Server with "Windows-authentication"
2. You have your repository on a network share that requires certain user-level permissions to access

If you are NOT doing those things, then this service account user can be set to the internal/not specified user (the default) -- even after installation.

Now, some installations use a service account user to "remind" them of which user was logged in when ALM was installed.  Newer versions of ALM and MS-windows are much more picky about allowing file-level maintenance by users other than the one who installed ALM (some kind of "ownership" behavior).

Some companies set a "real" user as the service account user, then later freak out when that user leaves the company and the system Admin removes it form the AD/LDAP list.

So, if you use a service account (not a real person) it is better to have a STATIC/not changing password, otherwise, you are left scrambling to change the password specified on the service every 90-days or so.

Good Luck