Broadcom Clarity Reviews

The most valuable features is the broad spectrum ability to pull in all of our portfolio information and drive that down to where the end result outputs to our financials. This allows us to close books each month.

We're a private company, so we do a lot around CapEx from the perspective of revenue and how all that is driven from a financial perspective, so by having a broad overview of bringing things in through ideation and portfolio management and approvals for money spent, we're able to keep a pretty good control over that from a holistic, enterprise-wide perspective.

Particularly in our technology department, we get approvals for projects, expenditure for each project, and when the projects are approved, we're able to track them on the portfolio down to the project-level.

This is from a global-perspective too, as we're headquartered in Nashville but we have heavy usage over in Asia, Hong Kong, and our Tokyo office. CA PPM is pretty good in getting a really granular, line-item overview of where we're at, pretty much almost real-time from expenditures.

They've got to come up to the year 2015 on user interface. It's really just not there. We've recently been looking at other products, wondering if we want to make a move. We don't really think that's the right answer, but at the same time we're hoping to see something here to help us with what we're doing.

They've really failed to innovate on the user-interface perspective. The complexities of the product are it's strength and it's weakness. We have a poor level of user adoption right now, just because it's so hard for people who who go in just once a week to do something. It's difficult for project managers to go in and remember how to do it, get through things in the user interface. We're kind of hoping to see something here at this conference, future road maps for user interface improvements, HTML5, whatever, to lessen some of those qualms.

Deployment has had no issues.

Stability’s fine. It's feature-rich, and that's fine.

No issues whatsoever.

I don't believe that we've had any instance that made it outside of our internal support in recent memory.

We recently upgraded to 14.2, and that was smooth and issue-less.

It's functionality is way up there at a grade of 9-8 out of 10. It's the industry leader in what you can do with it. The ability to get in and do that stuff, for people maybe with a lower technical aptitude than guys like us at these conferences, the user interface would make it a 4.

Make sure you have a PMO in place that is a very strong center of knowledge for your project managers. Also, make sure you're providing solid training on the usage of the tool. If you elect to go with a more agile model where you're kind of doing away with PMO, then what happens is you lose that center of knowledge about the use of PP MCA, and as I mentioned before, the complexity of the use of it is it's weakest point. We're experiencing a lot of problems with that right now.

Broadcom Clarity PPM's most valuable feature is the plenty of modules, such as portfolio, project, resource, and time.

Broadcom Clarity PPM could improve by adding advanced reporting in the tool. There are a lot of out-of-the-box reports, but I would like to see more advanced reporting.

I have been using Broadcom Clarity PPM for a few years.

Broadcom Clarity PPM has high availability.

The scalability of Broadcom Clarity PPM is very good.

Broadcom Clarity PPM's support has a very large team, larger than Planisware when it comes to technical support.

I have used other solutions other than Broadcom Clarity PPM, such as Planisware. Broadcom Clarity PPM is better than Planisware because they have the multi-road mapping feature. This feature gives clients very good visibility on what needs to be done and what will happen in let's say two or three years.

Broadcom Clarity PPM takes a couple of days to implement.

The price point of Broadcom Clarity PPM is less than Planisware. If a customer comes to me, and the cost is the main parameter for the selection of a tool, then I'll recommend Broadcom because cost-wise, they are less than other solutions.

If you have to train a consultant, certification costs around 3000 euros and Broadcom Clarity is only $250. There is a substantial difference.

I would recommend Broadcom Clarity PPM to others.

I rate Broadcom Clarity PPM a nine out of ten.

The use case is for us to be able to use PPM for its "true" program and portfolio management. We have not used it like that in the past. We want to get back to using it the way it was originally designed.

I would say to date, because we are on version 14.4, it has been doing what we need for it to do. We are looking forward to moving up to 15.3 with more of the capabilities.

It is easier to use than most other products that are out there. It will provide us the transparency we need in our organization to see how work is being managed and moving along.

We are also trying to do an integration with Agile Central because we are moving into that transformation. For us, it will be interesting to find out how we use both systems: Who is in what system, who is in the other system, and how all that data will flow.

The most valuable feature is the portfolio management tool and the new project management, and the way it will all look from the user experience.

We are so configured and so not out-of-the-box that we have not been able to utilize a lot of the functionality because we are so customized. It does not work like we would like for it to work, but we know that we are mostly responsible for that. We want to move away from this and move back to industry standards.

If you want to transform to agile, these are the roles that should be in agile: 

• You need your scrum master.
• You need your team. 
• These are the ways it should be mapped into PPM.
• This is the data you will want. 

It is almost like giving us those little details that we all kind of scratch our head and go alright, how would we do that? They have tested this. They have gone through lessons learned with other companies. Share that, so we are not making the same mistake.

They should say, "Hey, we have companies that did this. It did not work. You might want to consider doing this." Almost like a little cheat sheet on how to bring the systems together and things to think about. Because, like our company, we didn't know what we didn't know yet, so we are taking very infant steps and we are getting stuck on some really simple questions that I am sure that CA has resolved. 

However, we want to know. Share them with us!

I do not see any issues. I think if you were to ask my application manager, she said they have had some downtime issues. I am not on that side, so I have not seen any problems.

There are some performance issues in our financial areas, but we are not using the out-of-the-box financials. We are using our own. So, we have to kind of rip that out and put ours in. In that specific area, we have been asking and we are trying to get some stuff optimized, because it just takes a long time to get data.

I know our application manager is working with the technical support team. They have been trying to look at doing some things, but I have not heard what solutions they have been coming up with.

In the community, I do not see a lot of answers. A lot of people asking lots of questions, but I am not seeing a lot of answers come through.

We were on an older version of Clarity, version 9.

I was there in the initial set up of our upgrade, so we upgraded to 13.4 and I was part of that.

It was not straightforward. It was complex because we pretty much upgraded from our old version. We could have done a lot more out-of-the-box functionality, but we chose not to.

It was hard. Even the lessons learned from CA were like, "Wow," this was a lot bigger than we thought it would be.

We have different tools that we use at where I am at, so we use different PPM tools, but the goal is eventually to move us all to CA PPM. It is just because we are using that as more of a global tool. Some of our other areas of our company use different tools, and we are just trying to get them off of that and really focus on using the PPM tool.

Make sure you have a really good roadmap of what you want the tool to do for project and portfolio management, which is really what it is supposed to be doing. From a financial, what kind of data you would think. From a resource management, what you expect. There are other systems, like PeopleSoft. A lot of people use PeopleSoft. That is your true resource management system. It should not be used as a PPM. For finance, a lot of people use Oracle, and other things. That should be your sources system, it should not be PPM, so do not make PPM more than it is supposed to be.

Use the other source systems to feed data into PPM to get what you are looking for from a financial transparency of the work that you are delivering. That would probably be the number one thing, because we did not do that.

Then I think the number two thing is you have really have to get with a partner that knows the industry and does not just say they know the industry. They can actually give you the data to back it up.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: I need a vendor that will partner with us. Not just show us a new shiny tool, then walk away and we have to figure it out. I need somebody that will teach us to crawl first, then walk, and finally to run. Being there all the way with us. Not giving us a nice presentation and then we are on our own. That is where we will kind of get stuck.

We use the solution to manage projects and provide reports for management.

You can find the statistics of the products, share reports, and open boxes. Additionally, its ease of use helps with project management.

The solution could improve the experience for the simple user by converging the comments and dashboards.

The stability is very good.

I rate the solution's scalability a six out of ten.

Support is complicated. You should probably try contacting Broadcom Clarity if you're seeking the best experience for end-users within your company. They have the expertise and resources necessary to address any issues promptly and effectively.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It's an easy platform but primarily used by the IT team. The engineers usually use Primavera.

The solution is not more expensive.

A long time ago, I worked as an engineer and administrator for a device company. However, I worked there only briefly, handling importation for my company. I suppose it's because I lacked experience. The package had various tools available. We decided to try using it for our engineers and IT staff in the Philippines. However, it wasn't suitable, so we decided to buy Primavera for the engineers.

The company offers low-cost support and service. We don't need to change anything because the box code and tools are good. We have a code for configuration for our users. If they understand the new system, it's easy to request changes. They can modify the dashboard and configuration for specific data.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is mainly for handling the project and financial management across the organization. Mostly it is the IT department of the company which uses this tool. We may have a user base, in all, of about 20,000 users. It is also used by all the vendors of American Express. We on-board them onto the tool, and then they are able to track their the time against all the projects which they are working on with American Express.

There are a lot of other use cases.

It helps all the portfolio managers and the program managers to take stock of the financial situation at the program and portfolio level, because it rolls up all the financials at the product level.

We also have integration with CA Agile Central. So we get all the project-related data and the user stories-related data into Clarity and we report on to that: How much funding is there, and how much are the actuals between these two tools?

The resource management, the program management, financial management. It combines a lot of things, all of them are of benefit to our end users.

I don't work as an administrator of the tool, so I can talk from the standpoint of the end users who actually use it. I think financial management would be one of the most important features of all of them, to keep track of the finances. Everyone runs against a budget. They have a particular funding, which they have to manage. So I think the Cost Plans, Financial Planning, those are among the most important features for most users.

I think a lot of things that you'd want to see were touched upon in the roadmap yesterday, which we attended here at the CA World conference, yesterday. With the new UI, the Sub-Object part which they plan to bring into the new UI, I think a lot of customers would be happy to implement the new UI for their companies.

Maybe they could improve the mobile app. I think right now it only offers time sheet. If they can integrate a lot of other components into it - and not only CA PPM, a lot of other companies are now focusing on the mobile apps - I think that would be helpful for the users.

I think after the last upgrade, I think it was 14.2 or 14.3, the performance of the tool has improved a lot. I can see a drastic change in a lot of the stock jobs of the tool. And it has become quite stable.

When we started off - it's been almost eight, nine years now with CA PPM - at that time our user base was a lot more. But now with CA Agile Central coming into the picture, I think a lot of companies are making a shift of moving a lot of their user base from CA PPM to CA Agile Central. So it is cutting across various tools. It does not concentrate on a single tool.

They are very helpful. In fact, we have a bi-weekly call with one of the representatives from CA. And when they are in town, we have a meeting with them and they are very helpful.

I was not involved in the initial setup, I think I joined a couple of months after the initial set up. But I've been there all throughout since then, including upgrades. The upgrades used to be complex. But now, I think it depends on upgrade planning. How often do you upgrade? If you upgrade once in three years, then it can be complex. But if you keep on upgrading as and when CA releases their upgraded version, I think it would be smooth.

Regarding the new UX, we have not actually onboarded that yet. But, we plan to in the near future. From the administration team, we have seen it, we have implemented it in our sandbox environment, but it's not rolled out at the organization level yet. There is still a lot of planning to go into that.

Regarding the most important criterion when selecting a vendor to go with, I think it would be a long-term partnership that the company has with them. If we had already engaged with them in some other products and we see a value, then I think that would be the most important criterion.

I would say that you should first see the problem you are trying to solve in your company. I think if project, resource, and financial management are the things you are trying to solve, then it would be very useful.

Broadcom Clarity PPM is used in retail, oil, accounting, and industrial companies.

In strategy management, transparency, real time to analyse results and act quickly. Alignment through all the company.

The most valuable features of Broadcom Clarity PPM are demand, project, and product management.

Setup could be made easier.

I have been using Broadcom Clarity PPM for approximately 12 years.

Broadcom Clarity PPM is a stable solution. However, if the solution is not deployed correctly there can be some issues.

The scalability of the solution can be done by adding more features. We work with customers to meet their scalability needs.

We have approximately 100 to 9,000 people using the solution depending on the company.

The configuration process for Broadcom Clarity PPM can be challenging initially. The complexity and duration of the setup may vary depending on the unique needs and services of large corporations. Despite being a standardized procedure, it can still pose difficulty.

We deploy the solution to others and we use it for the deployment.

The amount of people for the deployment depends on the environment. For example, 10,000 people there need to be approximately 10 people for the deployment.

The price of Broadcom Clarity PPM is reasonable. My customers pay a license to use this solution on an annual basis.

The solution is good but I would recommend a team from Broadcom to do the implementation. If a poor implementor does the work there could be problems.

I rate Broadcom Clarity PPM a nine out of ten.

Manage projects, resources, and financials.

It's performing better with the new UI. The old UI is clunky and slow, but it's staring to get better.

It's pretty much the source of "the truth." Everything is together, everyone can see all the resources, financial projects, how long a project's going to take. Anybody can go in there and see any information they need about the organization as a whole.

Usability of the new UI. It's easier for people to go in there and know what to do. To train people, it's faster, more intuitive.

Also, managing resources. It's definitely the most important thing for managing your project.

Work Breakdown Structure in the Tasks: be able to drag and drop to a level three instead of just stuck at level two.

I haven't had any issues with stability.

Upgrading to 5.1 there was an issue, a syncing issue on the back end, that ending up getting fixed after about two weeks.

No issues with scalability. It seems we can have as many users as we need to. We've probably added around 50 full licenses but I haven't seen any issues with that in resources we have; a few hundred resources in there.

Tech support is good. A 10 out of 10. Everything was responded to within 24 hours, except for one issue where there was some miscommunication, but that ended up getting resolved in a few days just by sending an email to our rep.

Everything was through Microsoft Project, just the desktop version. People would get printouts or PDF's of them.

I was not involved but I think it was pretty straightforward.

Workfront was one of the vendors. We went with the CA solutions because headquarters was going with CA PPM, so we decided to move in that direction.

It has improved; 15.3 was a huge update. You have the Risks/Issues/Changes added to the new UX.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor include

• usability
• functionality 
• making it easy for the end user to use. 

Make people want to use it. If anything's overly complex, people won't use it. People have a difficult time moving to a new solution so it just has to be easy, so a non-technical user should be able to feel comfortable, click around, and not be intimidated by the solution.

I would give it a seven out of 10, just because the classic UI is very cumbersome. It can do everything but it's hard to use. It's easy to use once you understand it, but it's intimidating at first for somebody to see the solution. With the new UI, CA is heading in the right direction, and fast. They're adding features, I would say major features, two times a year, which is fast.

I would recommend it, but are there better solutions out there for another company? Maybe. There may be easier solutions out there.

CA should go in the same direction, move forward with the UX and keep developing that. There are a lot of startups that already have the usability; it's easy for them. But they're missing features.

We are working on the development for CA PPM, building a couple of portlets, a couple of objects for better usability for CA PPM users in our company. We try to provide automation of CA PPM and easy access, easy usability. Also, easy reporting for our users.

It's really performed well. I personally started from CA PPM 7.5.3 to PPM 15.2. There has been great innovation regarding the development, regarding the technologies.

I see the benefits for the organization in the Resource Management. No more Excel sheets for resource management, no more Excel sheets for financial management, no more data retention for reporting purposes. It is pretty quick in calculations for the managers and financial teams, and getting them the data.

The financial management part because it calculates, it retains the data, and everything is pretty much cool about the reporting part for financial. For PMOs it has some cool reporting and a dashboard. That is a good part of CA PPM. 

I want to see the mobile product. And, if possible, integration for SMS functionality.

In terms of stability, along the journey from the Clarity 12.0 to 15.2, it has become a good, stable product now. They are bringing a lot more performance improvements to the product, and the database side also. So now it is pretty much a stable product.

In terms of performance, I would say scalability is around an eight out of 10.

The support guys are pretty much technical. They respond back to me as soon as there is a ticket with them. The conversation is good and we've had a lot of quick solutions.

No, we didn't have a previous solution. But in terms of managing projects, when we saw a lot of complexity in the managing of projects, we realized we needed to go for a PPM and try it once.

It is pretty much cool. And I would say the setup and the upgrade capabilities from CA, the way they have it implemented and prepared the end script is pretty much cool.

Only CA PPM.

Moving ahead, I am looking forward to CA PPM mobile technologies, the mobile app for PPM users, that would also be a good addition to the user experience.

The new UX is pretty cool. I would rate it about an eight out of 10. I joined in the demo for a couple of users for the new timesheet UI. They feel a little bit cool about it, and I have put one idea forward for the timesheet UI and that is with CA. But the new UI is pretty cool, and the "Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down" approach for the approval or rejection of the timesheets is a pretty cool approach.

I would say the criteria for investing in a vendor would be how complex the implementation would be for financial, how complex implementation would be for the projects, how complex the implementation would be for Agile.

I rate it a seven out of 10 overall because they are still using SOAP functionalities. I want them to move out of SOAP and go for REST APIs.

Go for the PPM product, try it once, you will see it makes a big difference and you can get a lot of benefit from CA PPM.