Broadcom Clarity Reviews

The valuable features are the ability to manage our portfolio of products and initiatives that we're working on.

The PPM tool has allowed us to move from project management to product management without upgrading or changing the tool. That means cost savings. Just working with the vendor and being able to use the tool in different ways as we grow and scale has been beneficial.

I would like to see the advent of personas and making the tool more customer-centric. My needs are different than the next person's needs and the tool should know that and adjust the content that it shows me. That flexibility in the tool, that marginalization, would be very important. It meets our needs, but we're changing and evolving and the tool is coming along but it's kind of playing catch up.

Stability can be a challenge at times, but we've got an account rep and a support team with CA that helps us work through those issues.

I think it scales well. We're probably one of the largest organizations in the world and probably one of their biggest customers so it does scale well

I think customer support has been a challenge at times to get to the right people who can help us with problems. If we raise an issue, it should get to the right people who can help us address it. We don’t like to resubmit and say that the issues haven’t been fixed yet. Overall, technical support has been a challenge.

I was involved with the installation of the last version. Our last upgrade was pretty straightforward, largely because we didn't customize the tool to a point to where upgrading was complex.

When selecting a vendor, I want to know that that can support our scale. The size of the company, the ability for them to support us. Our large size is a burden for a lot of companies. I want to see their set-up process and their ability to support us, not only from a support standpoint, but from a feature standpoint as well. I want to know if the development team is nimble enough to adjust and be responsive to what we need. Are they going to fit our needs today and then tomorrow we have to go buy something else, because they can't keep up? That flexibility and size is important. Depending on those needs, I would say the tool is robust to handle portfolio management at scale, but depending on where a company is and their maturity, and if they're still Waterfall or Agile, for instance. If they're more Agile, I would point them to something else until this tool can catch up. In terms of just core basic PPM requirements, I think the tool does a good job.

• Project list: exporting in excel for dashboard and other reports
• Advanced reporting: new feature used for simple reports and dashboards that can be scheduled, which has made project data much more accessible and timely
• Ideas: input and tracking of ideas
• Task list (within the project functionality): used by us to track project stages and deliverables

The near-immediate benefit was having all projects in one place. It has allowed for standardisation of reporting and statuses, and improved visibility across the organisation - particularly to senior management. The aggregate reporting that this enabled elevated our position in the eyes of senior management, as it has allowed us to provide more-informed, data-driven recommendations.

Their agile solution is separate from their PPM solution, and really should be available together. Also, integration capability with larger financial and resource management systems would allow more organisations to benefit from their portfolio functionality much earlier.

I have used it for five years.

Ironically, since going to the on-demand solution, we have had some inexplicable data and behaviour on our projects. The performance improvement that was promised was not as evident.

We took their 'on-demand' solution earlier this year. While it has been useful to just 'get to the problem' without having to get our SI involved, we are finding the amount of effort with their help desk trying.

We did not previously use a different solution. We were collecting singular project status reports on MS PPT, with little to no aggregate reporting.

Initial setup was fairly straightforward.

It was implemented by a vendor team. A huge lesson for us is to have our processes well defined - and preferably in use - before implementation. Because our PPM capabilities were so immature at the time, our team made many assumptions about how we would use the various functionalities and had those all implemented from the start. We have had a three-year journey of trying to roll this back.

• Make sure that you have clear and defined processes prior to implementation.
• Insist on an experienced and knowledgeable SI from CA PPM. They are worth spending the money on, and their advice, particularly on best practices, is invaluable.

There is a lot of potential for portfolio management functionality. However, integration functionality with other financial and resource management tools would go a long way, as it would allow for the input of the required information needed for portfolio management. For large(r) companies with established / preferred financial and resource management systems, it is unrealistic to expect them to move (quickly) to a new tool. For us, this has meant not using the portfolio management functionality at all.

I am a consultant and I recommend and implement specific solutions for my clients. I am currently working on behalf of a company that implements this product for its customers.

Clarity PPM is a product that I have worked with personally. It is primarily used for project management, project portfolio management, and for reporting services.

The interfaces for project management, portfolio management, and reporting services are always helpful.

Intake and demand management functionality could be better.

In the future, I would like to see integrated Agile features and better integration with Agile tools. There are a lot of different teams that are using Agile tools and there is a demand for that.

I have worked with Broadcom Clarity PPM for more than five years.

Scalability is great, especially with cloud-based solutions. It makes the product very portable and users can access it on tablets, smartphones, and whatever device they have. This model makes it scalable.

The implementation is not complete and it is expected to take between four and eight months.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We are primarily using it for analyzing our projects. It is performing very well at the moment. We do want to expand our functionality to include resource management, portfolio management, and more of the financial aspects of it, as well.

Right now, it is the project management module.

It is allowing us to keep track of what our projects are doing, and the idea module, what projects are coming into the pipeline.

I like the new UX. I am hoping that we will move to it soon. I think it is a vast improvement. It is much easier and more user-friendly.

While I know it is coming in the roadmap, the risks issues and changes on the new UX would be amazing. However, the risks issues and changes are not in the new UX yet. 

I know that it is a stable solution. It has been around for a long time.

We are On Demand, so SaaS. We really have not experienced downtime with it. Everything is so secure through our sites and stuff. We do once in a while run into latency issues, but it is not that bad. Nothing memorable.

It is definitely scalable. 

We have used technical support a few times. It was just little technical glitches. A page was not displaying correctly, or something like that.

They do answer us very quickly.

CA Community: I take advantage of it. I use it all the time. They are a great community.

Prior to using CA PPM, everything was spreadsheets. There were a few different homegrown solutions out there. We wanted to roll them all into PPM.

I was not involved in the initial setup. While not involved with upgrades at this organization, I did do upgrades with previous organizations.

The very first upgrade we did was quite complex, because we were moving from 7.51. I have been working with the solution for a long time, since 2006. We were moving from 7.51 up to 8. That was a big jump. It was a lot more complex than we initially thought it was going to be.

Do your research, do your homework, and definitely, contact CA.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Product stability: It has been around for a while. It is not a brand new thing. 
• The reputation of the vendor
• Cost

Our primary use case has been for supply and demand management and resource management. So far, it has been okay. We do two levels of resource management. 

Our first level is at the project overallocation, then we also have to do resource checking at the key date and event management. 

On the event management side, we had to do some custom steps. Our research managers and our booking managers have to go through multiple steps to go through that process. It is still efficient, but it is not as efficient as it could be if we had to do some custom stuff.

There are some tool limitations. We had to create some of our own summary competencies to create more of an agile tool concept, or an agile team concept, that they did not really have.

We are hoping for:

• Better resource management
• Reducing the time it takes to get resources identified. 
• Demand
• Putting all of our projects together in one project. 

We used to have where one department would have their own plan, another department would have their own plan, and these were all different plans for the same client. Now, we are smashing them together so there is a little bit of a learning curve of working together, which is more of us; organizational change management. 

In general, we hope to reduce our time to finding resources to backfill resources and also reduce admin time to get a project setup and running. 

• Having information altogether in one single source.
• Being able to look at the data across team members, resources, projects and coming up with the algorithms and resources. 

Moving more to an agile state. It is very difficult. There is not a good way to have a team member manage tasks. So, a project manager can update assignments and can say, "I'm going to move this work to this person," but when you are going to a more collaborative based approach, PPM does not support that. 

It is hard for them to say, "I have a person on my team who is going to be available, I am going to move that task to them." That requires a project management license, it doesn't require a team member license, so the licensing model does not sometimes support the way the business world is going. I think they need to reexamine having some of the capabilities of a project manager be available to team members. 

It still lacks some key features and we had to do some custom stuff. It has some deficiencies, but we also have not optimized everything. 

Stability has been okay. We have had some performance problems. I do not think it is necessarily related to CA. I think it is the way we deployed it. We need to optimize it. 

I do not think that stability has been a problem. I think we just need to do some indexing. 

We have not, CTS has, which is our IT partner. We also have worked primarily with Rigo Consulting to do our implementation services. Since we are just now getting live those are the ones. 

Microsoft Project focused more on resource management, schedule management, not necessarily on demand management, integrations, agile, etc. We switched due to scalability.  

We had a lot of problems with Microsoft Project. We had to abandon using Microsoft Project because it was not working. We kind of had egg on our face. That is one thing that CA can do better. Give us a better scheduling tool. 

It was about a four year journey for Cerner. We know that our resources were not being deployed. We were spending a lot of time trying to find the right resources. IP uses it. CTS is going to be using it. It was an enterprise decision to invest in a new solution. 

The initial setup was complex.

We worked primarily with Rego Consulting to do our implementation services, since we are just now getting live. We just rolled out about four weeks ago.

Talk to other clients.

The depths of tools and technologies that you have available for all clients has surprised me. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Willingness to do partnerships
• Willingness to be transparent
• Credentials and references from other people. 

Portfolio and project management.

We just started, but it's a simple and powerful tool. I really love it compared to the previous one.

Previously it was complicated. We had to do the costing, everything manually, after doing the integration of a couple applications. Now, because of CA, it's going to be one application as a whole.

It will be one application for the whole PPM department: portfolio, project, and reporting in one tool.

It will improve things because it's already integrated into one. Before, there were something like three applications, and you had to integrate, and sometimes there were a lot of errors coming out. Sometimes the old system would crash.

• Timesheet Approver
• Resource management

You know where the hours of each resource manager or each worker are.

Blueprints. I'd also like to see the user interface simplified, and to have a lot of templates available on each blueprint.

I think it is stable. It's been on the market for so long, and it's CA.

Scalability is good.

I'm not sure about why the switch was made, because the one who made the decision is our director, and the architects. But I think it was because it simplified things for the users; that matters.

We evaluated Primavera Unifier and some other portfolio management systems. We went with CA because it's so easy. Everything is easy to do.

Regarding the new UX, I actually haven't heard about it.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria are that

• their product has to be easy to maintain
• the users can easily adopt it, with whatever interface
• it's easy to upgrade.

I would tell colleagues who are looking for a similar solution this will work. Give it a try. I know there are a lot of products out there, and companies that are really well known. But just give them a chance to demo it and you will like it.

Our primary use case is for doing portfolio and project management. Our engineering group serves a lot of different markets. We have a live events market, we have commercial market, we have transportation market that we serve. There are all these different requests coming in and hitting engineering, and it really becomes a question of, "What's the most important thing for engineering to be working on?"

We really needed a good way to prioritize that work and make it visible so that, not just our management, but also our engineering group can look at that and say, "Yes. This is the most important thing. This is what we're supposed to be working on."

We were doing all this in a spreadsheet. We were in Excel and it was a nightmare. It was really just, "Get off of the spreadsheet and get something centrally located and available to everyone." 

We are planning on integrating that with our work item management system. We currently use TFS but we're looking at VSTS. So we're looking at doing integration there and tying that portfolio and project management into our work Item management system as well.

I think the most value that I have seen is the the team management, the resource management. We have flexible scrum teams, we have developers that will serve on one scrum team for a few sprints or for a project, and they'll switch around. Being able to track where people go, and making sure that our teams are fully staffed, and well staffed, so that we can be successful on the projects we're trying to do.

We've only been users for about a month, so I can't really say what is there and what isn't there. 

Some people have expressed interest in how are we doing the time tracking stuff because we have a separate time tracking system. And then within TFS we also track hours and our effort levels there. It seems like that is maybe a direction we could go, unifying all that under one system.

I've not had any complaints or heard of anything, so it seems to be perfectly stable from what I can tell.

Scalability is great. We've got literally hundreds of engineers. We've got a lot of teams working on a lot of different projects. It seems very scalable to me.

The step from spreadsheet to this... We knew we were in a bad spot with the spreadsheet. We said,"Okay, let's take a good first step and get off of that and then we'll go from there." It's really exciting. I'm hoping to see the tool mature and see how it really benefits organization in the future.

The initial set up was handled by a couple of their engineers but someone came from WinMill and did a training with us and a bunch of our engineers. That was really helpful to get introduced to the system: This is what we can do. This is what we can't do.

I wasn't involved in the setup but I keep hearing the term "configured", like we did some of our own configurations, not customizations, but certainly the platform seems very configurable to suit our needs, and that was very helpful for us.

In terms of the new UX, we've only been on the one version. That is the UX. We've never seen anything else. I just came out of the 15.3 session though, here at the CA World conference, so I'm curious to see what happens. I don't think we're on that version yet. I'll be curious to see what my organizational feedback is once that goes live.

It's still pretty early, like I said, we've only been users for a month, but I would give it an eight out of 10 overall.

The platform is quite robust. We were looking for a solution that would help us build a PMO for our operations, which are based in four different countries. They all have different needs, and different business objectives and relationships; so we needed a very robust yet flexible solution.

CA Clarity, now called PPM, has met all our expectations. We're very delighted with the use of it. Internally, we have seen a good return on investment. The adoption rate has been quite easy for all our project managers and the head of the department; so we are very, very happy users.

There are several benefits to it. First of all is the accountability. You can go deep into any project that you have in your portfolio in terms of resource assignments or scheduling, costs and deviation from the plan. All of that combined with a very intuitive user interface makes the work a lot easier for all the PMO activities.

It was a big improvement because we did not previously have a formal tool to manage projects. So, we went from nothing to using the “best of breeds”; so we are very satisfied with how everything turned out.

I don't have a deep knowledge of the product, so I am probably not the best person to give you feedback on that. That would be more the function of our PMO head.

I know that there is a kind of normal evolution in the PPM roadmap. So there should be more analytics, some small improvements in terms of usability, and things like that. But I think the platform is very stable and very reliable. It's scalable; and it complies with any expectation that a company, at least a company of our size, might need.

3 years now.

Deployment has been quite smooth, where the partner´s expertise helped a lot.

I think it's a very stable platform. We haven’t suffered so far from any kind of technical difficulties. There are some bumps in the road. Maybe these are more related to functionality, or things that appear on the way that you need to learn; but I haven’t seen any technical issues.

It's a scalable enterprise-level solution. There are no problems with it.

At first, we got good help both from CA and the CA partner who joined us in the deployment. Once we rolled it out, thought, we didn’t have any kind of technical issues.

We did not use any other vendors before CA to provide a solution. When we were selecting a vendor, we considered their reliability and presence in our region. This is a key factor for us, and CA has fortunately been stable in Latin America. It's committed to our countries, and that means a lot. Price is also important. That’s normal.

It is definitely worth taking a good look at it. Don't be scared off by some people saying it's an expensive solution. You cannot compare a tool like this with some other tools that are out there in the market, or even open-source options. It's an unfair comparison. If you're looking for an enterprise-level solution, then CA PPM definitely is the best out there.