Broadcom Clarity Reviews

I used to work for CA Technologies. After that, I worked for CA Partners. So I have some experience implementing these solutions. As an architect, I have designed solutions. 

We work with projects. We have integrated the solution where we open tickets into them, and change management. We open tickets, we track all the tickets, we re-work all the details, then we turn it into an idea in PPM. Then we convert it into a project and manage portfolios. We work with all Service Management administrations and then we have to work with the project solution.

We work with IT service desks. We have worked with financial services, as well. We have here in Mexico some construction enterprises working with the solution.

We have an integrated Service Management with third party solutions, with discovery solutions, with asset management solutions from other brands of their solution, and monitoring solutions, and with in-house solutions. We also integrate this Service Management with SAP financial solutions.

In terms of how Broadcom Clarity PPM has improved our clients' organizations, our users are working better with the solution because the first level of attention is now in charge of our configuration in Service Management. So we don't have any analyzed work with the first level of attention. With the second level, yes, the experts are working with the solution, but we were able to optimize the first level for this kind of attention. The first attention for the end user is now in charge of the solution.

The feature that I have found most valuable is the XFlow, that interface is pretty cool. We have worked with IT PAM with the first two commissions. We have mainly worked with those companies, because we work a lot with process automation, to perform workflows to optimize everything within the organization.

In terms of what could be improved, the end user interface could be improved to be more intuitive, because we sometimes have issues with customization. Sometimes we are not able to customize everything for the end user's interface, and they require more customization. We should be able to perform a deeper customization here.

Additionally, I'd like to see more compatibility with the Active REST connection because we have worked with SOAP and WSDL but we need more compatibility with the Active REST connection.

I have been working with Broadcom Clarity PPM for about six, seven years.

I think Broadcom Clarity PPM is a pretty strong tool. We use a lot of components to increase functionality, and with their latest versions, I think things have improved. I think we sell their roadmap - a wide roadmap to cover that.

Broadcom Clarity PPM's scalability is okay. Obviously, it could be better. But now we have great scalability with Service Management.

Our clients are medium and large enterprises. For example, I implemented for a company in Columbia which had about 3000 users.

I think that the solution's usage has been decreased because the solution has a lot of competition right now. For example, Service Now is improving the end user interface and the final digital interaction and I think Clarity Service Management is not. I feel that Service Management is not developing more functionality to cover the end user's demands.

In terms of technical support, from one to 10, I think it is a seven, because lately the support agents take a lot of time to give an answer. Sometimes we have issues and the attention is not as fast as we need. We have to wait for a long time to get a response.

I'm currently using ServiceNow and Service Management with some monitoring solutions from Broadcom.

Most users that switch from other solutions to Clarity PPM were using open source solutions. Maybe they were using BMC Remedy, but it would be kind of weird that they jumped from ServiceNow to Clarity Service Management. I haven't seen that. They switched from open source to Clarity Service Management, and from BMC to Clarity Service Management, but I've never seen from ServiceNow to Clarity Service Management.

The initial installation is kind of simple, following the research, but the complexity begins when we need to customize part of the structure. For example, when we need to create a new field on the system we have to stop services and that's not possible in a protected environment. In a quality assurance environment, we need to open a change request ticket just to create one field within the database. That should be easier to manage and to handle. We haven't been able to create one internal field effecting the services.

We have performed deployments that take from two months to six months. It depends on the customer size, because we have customers with many customizations, so we have to change some things within Service Management. This is because out of the box, it's not possible to cover all the customer's demands.

The most important solutions here in Mexico are BMC, ServiceNow, and Broadcom. Five years ago, Broadcom was one of the most important solutions in Mexico, but now we made a transition from CA Technologies to Broadcom. They lost many customers here because they were not able to renew their licensing. Maybe Broadcom lost a lot of customers because of the service.

The main differences, pros and cons, between Clarity PPM, and ServiceNow are that Broadcom Clarity PPM is easier to use and easier to manage. Clarity PPM has a more composite structure. That means that displaying, making changes, and performing customizations are more difficult for the end users. The consultants can deal with that, but sometimes the customers are not able to identify some components and to identify some configurations that you can perform in Clarity Service Management. Whereas in ServiceNow, you can do that with only a button. That's the difference.

Just to be clear, when we are designing and recreating the solution design, we have to be fair with the scope. We need to use all the components to improve the functionality. We have to use all the components available. XFlow, IT PAM, all the tools that can be used to improve the functionality, because competition is getting very hard. This makes it very difficult because I have 12 years working with CA components and CA technologies. So for me to switch from CA, from Broadcom, is sometimes kind of hard because I am a Broadcom implementer.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Broadcom Clarity PPM an eight.

The user interface should be improved to be able to receive any challenges from the users. They expect an easier interface, an easier way to find the sections, and an easier way to find the menus. I think that would be the biggest improvement.

We use it to track projects and work in our portfolio. For us, it is about the reporting on project statuses during the project lifecycle.

The benefit of using the SaaS version is that it is more manageable than needing to have the infrastructure and the overhead of being on-premise, which would be too much for us. We really like being able to use the SaaS solution so that CA is managing everything except the actual data capture and generating reports.

With it, we're able to organize how we collect information and ideas and projects and get them funded. Without it, we would be using Excel spreadsheets and people don't want it to be like that.

It lets us aggregate all that information about ideas and projects, and put them into common reports which we can share. That's been very valuable.

I would like to see the ability to connect with other kinds of reporting engines like Tableau, or other kinds of BI tools. That would be crucial for us. We use those tools anyway, so we end up exporting data from PPM, and then importing it into those tools. It would be better if we could do it directly.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable.

Technical support has been up and down. That's not always a great experience. It's difficult to work with. I've been using this product for many years now, so it's both good and bad.

We had nothing before. We were basically doing it manually in spreadsheets. This was our first foray into formal project portfolio management. We made that move in 2009.

It was fairly difficult to get going. We had to try it a couple times. We had signed up initially for a program that was supposed to get it up and running in 30 days, but it didn't explain enough or train us enough about this very complicated product; so it actually took us a couple of years before it was right.

The HPE solution and the CA solution are really the only two options at this level. In general, we decide primarily on a vendor based on price and features. Our organization undertook a couple of different times to look at who makes these kinds of products, what they offer, and for how much (the per seat cost). We believe that we arrived at the right solution in terms of the amount of features for the cost.

Make sure that you need all the functionality included in the PPM tool because it's very complete. That means it can also be very confusing. If you don't need this much functionality, look at something that's not quite as robust in the enterprise class. There are other tools that don't have all the features. They aren't as complete, but they are easier to use.

I basicually use it for program management at financial services clients.

We primarily use it as a standalone program management tool.

Value streams, investment cases, road mapping, and fast destinations. These are the ones we use to manage stuff.

The risk management capability is good. It has a decent way of raising risk issues, connecting them to tasks or projects, and notifying users based on the access level.

I would like to see probably a little more features in terms of agile project delivery. It's mainly used as a program and project management tool, but it's not that great for agile projects.

Another major concern I see is usability. Many users I've worked with, including myself, feel that the application could improve in terms of user-friendliness.

I have been using it for three years. 

Stability is fine. The major concern I see is usability. Many users I've worked with, including myself, feel that the application could improve in terms of user-friendliness.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability is not an issue. I have seen it in an environment with around 20,000 users for one of my clients. 

ROI is good only when you're using it at a large scale. If you have a few users, it's not that good in terms of ROI.

We had to pay for licensing. It's costly. That's the main concern.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. It's been designed well and is very compliant with regulatory requirements. Security aspects are good in Clarity.

Clarity is pretty good for program management.

We are using it mainly for project management, but also for topics like resource management and portfolio management.

The project management from CA PPM has been improving a lot. Also, we have been reviewing, once a year, the functionality to see how we can make adjustments to the IT configurations and improve our system.

The most valuable features are the project, resource, and portfolio management processes are combined in one solution. The data is possible to use either in the one or the other process, and we do not need to enter the data multiple times. Then, we use the information for multiple purposes.

It would be good for them to work on the user interface to make it more interactive. They started with on something, but the functionality is not yet in a state where I would say, "Oh wow, use that one." 

The stability is okay. We do not have any issues with it.

There have been no issues on our side.

We use technical support every so often. The competency and available support are quite good, therefore we do not have any issues with support. Every time that we have a case where we need support, it is clarified right away.

I was not involved in the initial setup or implementation.

We evaluate if the solution is the right one for us once a year, therefore we are compare different alternatives.

On our short list, there was CA which is the product that we have now. Additionally, we evaluated Microsoft Project. From a functionality perspective, both were very similar, but we already used CA products for several years. We decided to stay with CA because the integration effort would otherwise be high.

Think about processes before implementing the solution. Then, connect the processes with the solution and make sure the solution is supporting the processes, and not that the processes need to be adjusted to fit to the solution.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor is to have a good balance between cost and functionality.

We are using it for project management, but really in a federal perspective which is acquisition management: Contracts are deployed for what the budgets were, how much has been appropriated against that budget, and managing the financial plans against projects. 

It performs great!

Basically, it keeps us on track financially. Again, we are federal, DOD. We budget two years ago, and the world changes. We have to keep track of where that money was acquired, where it got shifted to, what is been spent against it, and when we are running out of money. It is tracking that whole, what contracts have been issued against which projects, and when they are coming due. Again, it is managing the lifecycle, multi-year programs, and the people who do the work and the funding associated with that work.

Configurability.

The UX works really well.

I would love the ability to add my own functionality to the UI. Right now, I have to play with HTML portlets and have to pick the system out. I can't add a button on the UI to go do some work, so I am always working really hard around it to get extra feature sets.

They get a nine out of 10 rating, because they won't let me put a button on the UI.

It is very stable. We are on demand. With on demand, those guys keep it running. We occasionally have an outage here and there, but very seldom. Nothing memorable.

Scalability is fine. We run anywhere. We do not have the time sheet problem where everybody logs in on Monday. We have lots of users, about 300, not a lot but they are not timesheet users. They are all financial contract managers and PMs. We do not have the traditional " I have to do my time." 

We have what I will say is a different level of user, meaning they are in there to see if their projects are on, the date is up-to-date, and they are extracting stuff to feed the downstream processes. It is a different user type.

We have use technical support when we had questions or we have issues.

They have always solved what we had.

We have a test environment and a dev environment, so nothing moves to production until we are happy with it. We ran into issues early on about task naming IDs, etc., but it is all stuff once you know it, you can avoid it.

The tool that they had was not adequate, so we ended up inviting three different vendors in, did a down select, did a pilot, and it has been there since 2011.

We just had to learn it. It is straightforward once you figure it out. It was not anything too tedious.

Just make sure it handles all the business cases. Spend more time with the customer or the end users to get as many of the business cases and try to flush out "what ifs" with them, because it will make the configuration easier and you won't be backtracking. You do not want next year them saying, "They wanted that or we would have done this differently." 

Get upfront and mess with it, because it can do a lot of stuff. Join the communities, the CA communities, because you can learn tons. You can ask people questions. It is the best community that I have ever been in with lots of different software packages. Honestly, you can write a question, "Will this work?" and you get six people say "I did it," "It didn't," "Do it this way," or "Try this." Absolutely, the most active community I have ever been on. Good stuff.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: It has to be a vendor that is on the GSA, because it is government. It has to be the GSA and it helps to have schedules. It typically has to be someone that has a good credit score as we have to have software maintenance, because you can't run a piece of software in the government without it being under software insurance as they call it. We can't just pick any vendor, but of the big vendors, we can pick pretty easily. 

We are mostly using this tool for financial purposes, moreover for financial reports. The reporting is based on the CA PPM tool; thus we mainly use it for finances.

Although we have integration with different payroll systems such as AP and FA, at the end of the day we are getting the financial information from GL for our accounting purpose. This is our main purpose for using this tool.

It has definitely improved the working of our organization. Now we have a controlled PPMO that is handling or managing the projects. They have proper guidelines and can apply proper SOX compliance. We have governance for PMs and RMs. Monthly, they review this stuff and they can report on that.

There are some challenges that we are facing in terms of Jaspersoft software. I talked to the product team and they are seriously working on that. I am hoping that another 6 months from now, there will be improvements in the reporting and performance areas that will be very helpful for the user community.

It is too early to discuss stability because we are just going live in the first week of December. Let's see for the next 6 - 8 months how it is working and then it will be more relevant.

We are using it not just in one department but at the enterprise level; also in both our geographical locations, i.e., Canada and the US. The product is scalable.

We have used CA support and they are perfect. They respond back on time and give us the required solution. Even if they are taking more time, they will inform us beforehand. We are okay with their services.

Before this product, we had 3 or 4 legacy systems. One was used for time reporting. It was not a centralized one; only the Canadian people were using it. The US office was using Primavera. We wanted to collaborate everything into a single domain and that is why we selected the CA PPM tool.

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor was more flexibility in the CA PPM tool. They were more approachable, so that was another reason.

Depending upon the environment you are in, whether you are on SaaS or on-premises, take the decision based on which environment your company wants to be in and not just get any product. Talk to other banks or any other customers who are in SaaS and have similar requirements. Based on that, make your decision. Since on-premises has some benefits and on the other hand even SaaS has its benefits, so based on that you can select your solution.

CA PPM’s project management functionality is the most valuable. Being able to record project information, risks, issues, changes, status reports, tasks, and scheduling of resources etc. in one place instead of in different spreadsheets and documents is really important for project managers to manage their projects and for management to see the reports of that information.

Also, the time-tracking functionality and being able to track time to project tasks and other admin, sustaining tasks is also really valuable because we can see the actuals vs. the forecast for project metrics, and organization metrics. CA PPM has a mobile app that allows staff to time-track on the go, and also lets managers review and approve time on their mobile as well. This gives us a lot of flexibility especially for our services organization that is constantly travelling and removes barriers as staff do not need to log on to VPN with their laptop to time-track.

We were so disjointed previously because the project budgeted hours from our finance manager did not match the scheduled hours from our booking manager and that did not match the task hours from our project manager. Consolidating all the project hours into one location really improved the way we manage and budget project hours and helped get all these key people in alignment. This is critical for project success so we can execute on what is planned and if more hours are needed, a project change request can be done directly in PPM.

Additionally, being able to report on the data has been a real improvement. With everything in one place, running a report is real time and efficient. It really beats spending a lot of time manual time gathering the data and putting it into a PPT. PPM has provided a lot of visibility into our projects and the management has found the reports useful and insightful on project status and issues.

A huge pain-point is the Jaspersoft reporting. This is a new functionality that recently replaced the Business Objects reporting. Jaspersoft is extremely cumbersome and our end users dislike it, and are frustrated when using the criteria filter because many times the results returned do not match the results in the main system when using the inbuilt searches. It's a very frustrating function.

Another issue which almost became the deal breaker in choosing this system is scheduling. If you require scheduling resources across multiple projects for specific days dependent on the task, PPM is not designed for that. It allows you to see just the allocation across projects but not tasks. This becomes a real problem for a professional services group when resources are working on multiple projects at one time, and need to be onsite for different tasks so you need to be able to view across projects, and for multiple resources at one time. PPM has no calendar view for all the resources and what project tasks that are working on. We had to spend a lot of money customizing an add-on solution that could give us this calendar view.

A few other items that could improve, the time-tracking functionality is locked down and not very customizable. PPM gives you the ability to configure two attributes to help categorize the time, but that is all. It would be good to be able to add more flexibility to this module. Lessons learned module is only for lessons within a project. It is not possible to have this lesson be outside a project as a general lesson across the board. Also, there is no “template” that you can select for budget, there is only the ability to populate it from staffing so if that differs and in some cases it has to when you sell an engagement to a customer for one price but will not be changing that “budget” because it is a fixed contract, but you need to staff more hours.

There are definite improvements that could be made but overall, this is the best project portfolio management system I have seen and evaluated out there. I have evaluated several before we choose CA PPM, but CA PPM does give us the best project management functionality and features.

The best thing is one single source to capture all our IT project information. We are a very big company all over the world. We have all the data in one spot. The product is easy to access, easy to compile and pull up reports, with everybody working to the same tool. Training makes it easier. There are other things that we can add-on or we can expand upon. Because we're going to be implementing Agile, Agile Central, there are benefits of using the software as a service (SaaS) as a service platform We don't have to accommodate physical infrastructure for it. It's maintained on the cloud. People can access it anywhere. It makes it a lot easier too. We have people all over the world. I'm sure cost is probably a big benefit as well for us overall.

We are still early on. For the leadership, they see it as, perhaps, a more accurate way of gathering information for their decision making and as a single source. They don't have to go to every site and ask questions, try to gather and compile data from different sources or different Excel spreadsheets. We can collaborate with various teams running projects or portfolios around the company and we can gather data in different ways. We are using fields such as master programs. If we have major programs for the entire corporation, then we can compile and see what everybody is doing that is actually effecting, or not effecting, those programs. We make sure that we leverage resources and that we're not doing redundant work. If we have people working on the same things, why do we have different teams working on similar items? Maybe we could just put them together or maybe we can reapply those resources.

It helps us align to the overall business IT strategy. We had a bit of a restructuring and reorganization. We also try and demonstrate to the business the added value that IT has. I think this is a good way of being able to manage our own resources, and show that we are adding value to the organization.

We're pretty new so I don't know all the capability that the tool has. From what I'm hearing here, I see there's a lot more capabilities. We are running with version 14.3, straight out of the box. I don't think I've explored everything it can do. I think one of the things that I would like to see is more workflow. I would like to see more ability to send out communications from the tool, feedback to remind people, and let them know the things that they need to do. That would be very helpful. There are a lot of fields in the tool. When people first see it, they are overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. It probably could be more customized and configurable to the site so that we don't throw the stuff out there and people get overwhelmed by it. At the same time, I know it gives flexibility. I think it probably can be managed. I just don't have the technical side of it to see if we can do that.

We just started using it in May.

I think the stability has been pretty good. I really haven't had any issues with it. I see, from coming here to this event, that it's very widely used. I didn't grasp the magnitude of it. It has been used for many years by many companies. It's something that's been around and it's not something new. It's been proven and tested.

I think scalability has been easy. I think it works well. We have almost 3,500 users and licenses around the world. I think it was an easy transition to do that. I look forward to see how we can do this with Agile Central because that's the direction we are going now.

We have folks inside our group, our liaison, that deals with technical support. I haven't had to directly deal with the folks in CA. I think our folks, internally, are doing a good job. I think we probably need more internal resources or maybe have a direct link to those technical resources. I think that was, maybe, an internal way that our company is trying to handle it. Instead of having everybody going directly to CA, we want to have a middleman to whom we can funnel our issues.

We were using a SharePoint site in our Aerospace Group and our SBG, our Strategic Business Group, which is Aerospace. We had another couple of homegrown applications, the ones that were used for the financial piece of it. Now that we're going to this tool, it's great because it offers a lot more flexibility.

I was involved a little bit towards the tail-end of the installation. I was definitely involved in delivering training to our users because we had different business groups.

in-house team

There were some other tools we tried. I was not at that startup. I think it we looked into Accolade because I think that's being used by the Aero Engineering Group. We do have JIRA. We've tried moving to JIRA and I don't think JIRA had all the flexibility and the robustness that CA PPM does. To me, why even go there?

I think we moved to it fairly quickly once we got going. I think it's easy to move to. It seems to offer a lot of advantages, tools, and functionality. Just try it out. The company has been around and the solution has been used for a while. It's been proven and tested. It's not something new. Just give it a try.