Broadcom Clarity Reviews

Project and portfolio management for our CA PPM. We have traditionally run all of our projects through waterfall, but now we are transitioning to agile. So, we are starting to use CA Agile Central for that, and we are looking at integrations between those two tools.

Just being able to have everybody to see the work that needs to be done, provide the detail level for the teams, and show the roll-up level for those at the management level. 

We are able to track budgets, and with timesheets, actuals against budgets.

Resource management: It is our primary use now. 

Agile Central is a kind of a scrum tool for the teams to be able to do their work. We are just now starting to leverage the functionality to give a more portfolio view. 

CA PPM is a mature product. We have used it for years, but we have had some challenges. Maybe it was the way we implemented it. 

I do not think I can add anything to Agile Central, because we are new to it. I think we are really just trying to learn and leverage the functionality that is there, so I do not know yet.

I am not aware of any stability issues.

I am not aware of any scalability issues. 

We have an internal support team that I would go to first. They would then go to vendor, so I do not have to.

I typically only contact them for education, possibly.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

I think Agile Central is an industry leader in the agile methodology. I would look at it. 

The most valuable features of this solution are the portfolio management and the resources. Resources are key for us.

The benefit is to prioritize which projects we need to really focus on throughout the calendar year, and then correctly allocate the qualified resources to those projects.

We're on a SaaS environment, so we don't have direct access to the database. It would be great if we could somehow, some way access the database through that.

Stability is good. We support over 300 users and I haven't seen any problems at all.

I think it could handle a vast amount of data, a vast number of users that are using the tool simultaneously.

I have not used technical support for the solution.

We weren't using any sort of PPM tool at the time; it was all through spreadsheets.

Initial setup was straightforward; just using the tool, navigating it, what to do, what not to do. That sort of thing.

You should really look at the tool itself because it's a really powerful tool. It can do a lot of things, cover a lot of ground quickly and it can easily be picked up, as far as skill sets go.

I have rated it as such because of a lot of the project-related stuff it solves. Right now, we're just figuring out how to use the resources.

Even though I didn’t really make the decision, the most important criteria for me when selecting vendors, in general, are knowledge; experience; willingness to walk the customer through their issues; really understanding what problems they have; and how they can help them achieve their goals.

PPM provides end-to-end processes for portfolio, project, and resource management. It allows you to ramp up, in a controlled manner, based on your organization’s needs. The ability to configure PPM gives you the flexibility to align it and its strengths with your particular needs and the nuances of your organization. You're not isolated in a siloed process that can't expand. You've got a process area you can work in and then utilize the configuration capability to meet your needs.

It provides visibility into what we're working on and the amount of time we're spending. It helps us validate our forecast for labor resources and milestones for delivery. That's our primary use now. We're moving more into areas of resource management and forecasting for one and two years out. That's our next area that we're ramping up in. It provides the product management and the high-level portfolio management visibility we need today.

I recently went to a conference to see what upcoming features are going to be. I want to see what the trade offs are. With any change, you're always dropping some type of feature or capability. The key is knowing, in advance, what that new feature is so you can make the proper plans, address those changes, and communicate them to ensure good collaboration. If we do that, we'll be successful.

This is our third year using the tool.

So far, we've had very favorable uptime usage. We haven't had any major issues with downtime. That's been a pleasant surprise. We're using it in a SaaS platform and we're pleased with what we're seeing. The configuration capability that it offers has been beneficial to us. We're starting to leverage the new reporting capabilities that let our users to be power users rather than having to staff a reporting organization to supply all our needs.

It’s a little too early to evaluate scalability. Thus far, it's been scalable for our organization. We have a solid relationship with CA and if we have any challenges or needs we have an open line of communication. We work with them and those needs are addressed as needed.

Technical support is very good. We contact them if we have an issue that's not easily identified and it’s resolved pretty quickly. We open a ticket and monitor it’s progress. We maintain a continuous communication loop with CA until the issue is resolved.

We wanted to leverage our existing relationship with CA. We were trying to consolidate in our vendors, which most companies try to do. Having a shorter list makes life simpler as far as planning and budgeting. The CA suite for PPM and Clarity was ranked up very high by several of the independent research companies so we evaluated it with other tools and it came out on top. We've been moving forward since then.

I became involved mid-stream. The initial setup was already underway and I followed that through initial implementation into the growth and maturity stages of the processes, to align them within our organization.

It was a straightforward process. There was a degree of complexity because it was a different type process. Out of the box, it has a set procedure you need to follow. There are steps A, B, and C, and you're locked into that. With configuration, comes a degree of complexity. You have to be disciplined enough to build your processes first and then work on utilizing the tool, which is the right process to follow. It was a different method from what we had worked with in the past.

We considered several of the top vendors in that space that would be ranked in Gartner or Forrester. I won't mention what those are because they still have some relationship with us. All top tier, which spoke well for CA that they, from our perspective, came out on top.

Regardless of the solution you're looking for, always think about what your process is. Define those processes and have a clear understanding of your goal. Document that, clearly state it, and get buy-in from the key stakeholders, because they're going to be the individuals that are key to helping drive adoption downstream once those processes are built. It's not about the technology, it's about the process. In this case, I think the technology supports the processes that we want to invoke now and in the future.

We're using it as an on-demand service. We're don’t have an on-premises install, so we're learning some things in that space, as well.

When selecting a vendor, the relationship is key. A solid customer relationship must be more than just talk. You have to be able to demonstrate it and practice it. I think we saw that early on in the partnership with CA and in initially setting up the solution and understanding what was required. I think that's key to success.

The most valuable features are time compliance, capacity and demand, and resource management; knowing who is allocated to what task, what projects, what activities, and if they're on track or not. We have time compliance goals, where we have to complete time sheets and we have to have one-on-one meetings with our leadership. That's another value: making sure that we're compliant with those.

Cost and agility; it helps with that.

We use the SaaS version. It is really good because we don't have to be responsible for the platform; the hardware, upgrading hardware, upgrading the software, or any of those things. It enables us to have fewer developer hours supporting the product.

I don't know what I need right now, but we're implementing a lot of tools and we need to make sure that we can integrate. So, I’d like to see more APIs and maybe some improved UI with the Jaspersoft Business Objects Reporting side of it, to increase customer adoption.

I have not given it a perfect rating because of the UI of the reporting in Jaspersoft; just some UI issues, I guess.

We've had good stability with it.

Scalability is good. It's a licensing model; you just upgrade your license when you need to add more users. That's good.

They provide good technical support. We don't have a lot of issues, but we've had success with getting feedback from them and getting resolution to our issues in a timely manner.

We were previously using Primavera.

We decided to move to CA PPM because we had an ELA with CA and we needed to get to a tool that we could integrate with other systems. Also, Primavera was legacy. We had it for a long time, so we needed to get a better tool.

In general, the most important criteria when selecting a vendor is partnership, collaboration and working together to provide the best solution.

I wasn't involved with the initial setup. I wasn't responsible for the product until just before it was implemented in production. I've been supporting it since then.

From what I’ve heard, initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had some issues with resource management APIs, but I don’t think that's any different from others. It was data related.

It takes time; it's not done overnight. It takes a year or two to implement.

What we find valuable is the ability to bring all the different projects that we have into a central location. We have visibility into their status and the work that is going on. We can see whether the status is red, yellow, or green and can immediately identify how well the project is going on the dashboard. On the storyboard, it gives us a one page snap shot of the risks and issues, which can be brought to the attention of management in a quick and easy way.

It has helped to facilitate weekly program meetings. We can quickly review all our projects together and collaborate regarding where we need to work together and which projects need some help that we can rally around.

I think for us, we're still pretty immature from an organization standpoint in rolling it out. What we need is assistance from CA to help us roll out other features of the product that we already have and to utilize them to get the full value.

CA PPM is not easy to use. I'm a project manager and I have to use it every single week. Navigating around the menus to find what you're looking for is quite difficult. It takes several clicks to get to where you want to go.

We have been having some bugs and we are working with the vendor. But, we have not been able to solve why our financials for our project costs are not calculating correctly.

We haven't really had to test scalability. With our organization, we usually don't have more than 40 projects going on at a time and we only have about a dozen highly active users on it. I don't consider that too large of a scale.

We have tried to identify the bugs we have, but so far technical support hasn't been able to solve the issue with the project costs being calculated correctly.

I came in after it was already set up.

We haven't explored that yet.

I think it will give you a good 360 view of your project once you can roll out the other features. If you can incorporate your resource management so you can then track what people are working on, as well as the project financials, I think there would be value in seeing that holistic view.

If you're going choose that, make sure that you understand what you want to get out of the product. There's a lot to it and if you don't have a direction or strategy on how you want to use the product, I think you're not going to get the value out of your investment.

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.

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 in the business management office. We use it for our portfolio and project management and planning activities.

We are using an older version. Therefore, it is fairly limited, but I think what we are seeing in the newest version addresses a lot of the concerns that we are having.

We are still in the older version. We still have a ways to go. With the new UI, I think we will get through some of our adoption problems.

That in and of itself will help drive adoption, because the problems that we are having right now are that we do not have a great level of adoption or voluntary adoption. It seems very much as a top down enforcement type of thing. If people are not using it in the day-to-day, then your data quality is not very high. If your data quality is not very high, then you can't really leverage the tool for much more than the bare minimum.

In the new solution: It is good for us. 

• We can have a centralized view that we can have in our delivery and business organizations.
• Collaborate on certain levels.
• On priorities, investments, and those kinds of things, it is very helpful. With some of the things that they are rolling out with a bit more of the collaboration and social aspects, that that will help drive that even more.
• I love the new UX. The problem that we have had around adoption has been pretty much around the clunkiness of the old interface. So, we were encouraged by what they started doing with project management and personas a year or so ago. Now, seeing it flow through the rest of the tool is very encouraging.

I like what they are doing with the UI. I am interested to see, with the purchase of Rally, what they are doing with agile and integrating some of that.

I am greatly encouraged by some of the integration with the third-party BI tools. We have not been a Jaspersoft adopter. For us, the value in this data is unifying it with our other corporate data.

Jaspersoft really does not enable us to do that. I would like to see a more flexible user-friendly way for users to do some of their own visualizations, not having to understand Jaspersoft. We are looking at a tiered reporting architecture, where if I have a project manager in the tool to do their project management, it is not just an out-of-the-box status report. Can they do some sort of Jaspersoft customizations and do that all on the tool rather than having them go to a back office reporting solution? 

Our back-end business management, finance teams, and program owners probably will live more in the back-end reporting solution because it has our other data elements, our corporate workforce plans, and those kinds of things in it. Therefore, they can do the bigger picture reporting that we need for executives.

Putting a little bit more ad hoc reporting in the tool for the boots on the ground type people would be good, and they are doing more of that, essentially with the task boards and some of those things. I think to take those additional capabilities and turn those into things we can status, report, or leverage outside the tool would be good. 

With this next release, they are simplifying the connection to the back-end data warehouse stuff. This is good for me, but they are putting a lot of things now in the tool with task boards and the social things that it would be nice to see if you are doing a status report. You could pull up your out-of-the-box status report and pull in some of those comments from the task board or something else to illustrate where you were at the project. Pointing to what is going on with your dev lead saying this is the problem here rather than having everybody retype things.

To build more capability and unification into the reporting. They will get there. They are just building the capabilities now.

We have not had too many problems. We are getting ready to transition to a SaaS solution. I think we have got some concerns there, because we are all used to owning our own things, touching them ourselves, fixing them, and monitoring them. However, I have been doing some networking around it and I have not heard too many concerns about it.

In the end, we are not necessarily mission critical. So, we do not have to be 24/7.

We have had some issues in the older version on-prem with some of the back-end database stuff. That has all been addressed and we will be doing some changes going to SaaS. 

I think we will be fine. Plus, we hold onto everything all the time. So, it is partly our own issue/downfall. We are sort of our own worst enemy at times. I am fully acknowledging that.

I have not used technical support. I am on the business owner side, but I know my development manager has used them quite a bit.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

I have not looked at the competitors lately, but it seems to me that CA has made some significant advances. They were already sort of in the top tier in the industry anyway. So, it is good to see the investment that they have put in the last couple years. It seems to be just accelerating the feature sets.

Understand your business processes first, in great detail. Then, understand your data structures and you will be home free.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

Since we are a global, multinational company, we require all of the following:

1. They have got to be on our preferred vendor list, before we are allowed to talk to them.
2. Relationship
3. Price
4. Support.

We look at how can we leverage the product and how can we get pricing and scalability across the whole enterprise.