Broadcom Clarity Reviews

• Project and other objects portfolio management
• Financial management
• Reporting possibilities

• Ensures a consistent approach to project management and approvals of the project gates.
• Provides an integrated view on the planned and active investments. (Ideas and Programs/Projects)
• Enables us to measure performance of the project portfolio

Up to version 12.x the GUI was still Web 1.0, and although it has been redesigned with release 13.x-14.x it is bit behind other solutions. (Based on the evaluation of 15.1 release I can confirm that UX has really improved). Replacement of Business Objects with Jaspersoft BI and its full integration within CA PPM is still not finalized but gets better with every release.

My company has been using for 10 years. (I am involved for last six.)

Upgrade projects from 12.0 to 13.1 (2013) and then to 13.3 (2014) were rather smooth. I was not around when Clarity was deployed the first time (2006-2007).

I have not really encountered any stability issues. I observed two occasions in past six years that service needed to be restarted due to becoming unresponsive. More often, we experienced unpleasant lags with screen refresh in the beginning (due to incorrect set up of portlets mostly that was later resolved).

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support experience varied over the time.

We previously used two instances of Clarity in the business division and a different PPM tool in the IT organization for IT PPM. The decision was to deploy one system group-wide for all kinds of projects.

Business requirements specification and evaluation took four months, followed by almost six months of the design review. The tool itself was not to be blamed, as the organisation was not willing to adjust any of the complex workflows it was using with the previous solutions.

We chose the least expensive vendor and their level of expertise was not balanced (in some areas excellent, in others less so).

We never estimated ROI (which is huge pity as there are calculation tools available both from CA and independent consulting companies).

It is not the cheapest option, but definitely worth the price (if properly designed and implemented).

No other options have been evaluated as the management decision was to apply EA principle of recycling already owned tool deployed in 2 independent installations.

Get familiar with the out-of-the-box functionality. Even if you do not plan to roll out fully fledged resource management with time tracking, make sure you understand how the things work. If you decide to start with something "lighter" (that is what CA PPM integrators always suggest), you will be left dependent on the custom solution of that vendor.

Its strength is all the different features it offers. It's kind of a one-stop shop solution for project managers, resource managers, and finance department personnel. There are a lot of different uses for the tools; and it enabled us to consolidate our list of tools from five or six tools down to just PPM. We're managing one tool with one person managing it as an administrator, instead of having two or three administrators for each tool, with manual processes, and so on.

It is much more streamlined, with a lot more automation, and it’s just easy to use.

A benefit of the SaaS version is not needing to deal with any of the standard on-premise issues that you have. We can rely on the vendor to do a lot more of the upgrade work and things like that. I don't feel like we're pressured, like we would experience with some of the other SaaS providers out there, to be on the latest version or pick up any other applications that go with it.

It just costs much less, and it's as reliable as if it were on-premises. We don't have to pay for the hardware cost. We don't really have to support any of that. It's just a matter of giving them a call and asking for whatever it is we need.

When you look at it, it saves us a ton of money. Fewer FTEs to manage the different products or tools. As I've mentioned, it's a one-stop shop. As a project manager, I can go in and do all the administrative work that I need to do; instead of doing it manually over spreadsheets, uploading it to SharePoint, and so on. It's just a lot more straightforward and convenient.

We're actually releasing two different funding portfolios. Right now, I think we have between 10 and 13 in the company. As we're going through each of the funding portfolios, we're evaluating what they're doing today. We're not only just making them use PPM, but we're streamlining some of their processes and weeding out some of those things that we used to do solely because they are used to doing it that way. The funding portfolios are becoming much more efficient. We're re-evaluating what the value is of everything that we do today. As we streamline it, we put it in the PPM.

It needs to provide a more mobile-friendly user experience. There could maybe be a little bit more around Jaspersoft reporting. I know Jaspersoft is kind of decoupled from PPM, but reporting is one of the big draws for us. It would be nice to be able to do all our project management, and then report on it, using the same tool. If they could keep building out Jaspersoft, that would be great.

We have no issues with stability.

We're going from a few hundred users to several thousand in a few months. We haven't done any stability testing, or anything like that, with around three thousand users; but we know that there are other companies which do use that many people; so we're not too worried about it. We aren’t experiencing any issues today.

Technical support has been average. We do a lot of investigation on our side before we use CA support. Our assumption is that if we can't figure it out, they should probably be able to. A lot of times, it takes a couple of days before we even get a decent response, or something that gets us closer.

It almost seems like we need to rely on some of the contractors that we use, such as Regal Consulting to answer some of our more in-depth questions.

Their whole support model seems to be a little bit fractured, I guess. Depending on the issue we have, we have a completely different experience. I would say there are some frustrating aspects of that and we're not always confident that we're going to get an answer to any of our questions.

We hope the expertise will improve. As we get more and more in tune with PPM, we're answering more of our own questions. I'll be honest.

We didn't have any real solution in place. We saw the need for a tool to take on all these different responsibilities, and PPM just happened to fall into place.

I wasn't around for the vendor selection. I know we looked at a Microsoft product and then there was one other one. I think what it came down to was this: Microsoft was cheaper because of the deal we have with them, but CA PPM fit more of what we're looking to do in terms of our long-term vision. It was going to fit a little bit more. It was more aligned with what our company was looking to do.

My advice would be to make sure that you understand the tool before you start fitting everyone or moving everyone to it. If you don't understand the architecture, it can cause a lot of rework in the future. Truly understanding the tools is important while having experts that understand the tools is critical.

I like that it’s very flexible. If you need it to do something, you can make it do that. That's a good thing.

For example, out of the box we use the SaaS version. It's not highly customizable as if we'd installed it locally, but out of the box there's no process to load the data warehouse on any regular basis. So you have to make a job to schedule and run this process according to your schedule. They give you the tools to do all these different things.

Previously, we used a different tool that didn’t have very good reporting. Clarity PPM came with reports out of the box, and we can make more, as we need. That was a really good thing.

It doesn’t help us collaborate more so than before. We're trying to open it up to other areas of the company. Right now it's just used within IT.

For a lot of people, it's just a place to put your buckets for your time. I'm not on the team supporting the tool; I'm on the technical side. Whereas we have a team of people that support the PPM and deals with business strategy.

The main benefit of the SaaS version is the cost. Also, I'm not responsible for any server maintenance, which is nice. If their servers go down, it's somebody else that gets a call at 3 a.m., not me. I like that.

I would like to see some of the automations that I've implemented included as part of the tool. For example, prior to a couple weeks ago, our administrator would have to go in every week and manually open next week's time sheet and close an old time sheet. We got some code that automated that process for us. I don't see why that couldn't be something that was just a part of the tool.

It's been very stable for us. We've been using our PPM implementation as a means by which to encourage the company to get more on-demand solutions because it's been successful for us.

We haven't had any stability issues.

I have used technical support. You need to get to the right person and that can be challenging. We've had tickets open for months, and we would try to reach out and say, "Hey, what's going on with this?" "Well, we're working on it, we'll get back to you." In certain situations, that would go on for months.

Finally, I'd get a phone call or an email from another person saying, "Oh, I was just assigned this ticket, here's the two-minute thing you need to do to fix it." Once you get to the right person, it’s great. But now I know who to go to.

We used Primavera for almost ten years. People were generally unhappy with it. They felt that it was inflexible and wanted something new. We have other products from CA, and they came and offered us PPM if we got a bundle. It was a big change for us to go from an old tool to the new tool.

I was not involved in the selection process. That was much higher than me, so I don't know what they did.

I was involved in the initial setup. Just setting up the system was very easy, because they did it all and it's on demand. Trying to make it work in our world had it's moments. For many projects, we had to get the old data from the old system into our new system. That posed some interesting and unique challenges.

I would have to look at Primavera all over again, because I know they're changing and evolving.

My advice is to plan, plan, and plan. Just know what it is you want and then go for it.

The most valuable features of the solution are that it's process driven and helps push our business users to follow that process.

We use it for time tracking and that is a big aspect that we use it for. It's a very useful tool to track all those hours against all the project work that we do and to get the metrics to understand where our resources are going.

I would like to see a continued focus on the Data Warehouse and the reporting tool. There is a big opportunity there and some things are still not quite there when you compare it to other solutions that have turned out well.

Currently the Data Warehouse does not store/archive historical data. Anytime you run the Full Load to load it with data, the table is truncated and reloaded with a specific time interval of data. It would be really useful if that data stayed in there and did not need to be truncated so, over time, you would build a system with historical data that you could purge from the transactional tables.

Regarding Jaspersoft, the tool itself is lacking from a user community, especially when compared to BOXI and more mature tools. Our users already use BOXI and can do so much more when it comes to building reports on their own.

The solution is quite stable. Occasionally, we might have issues on some newer features when we go through upgrades but once we get past them, we usually don't have those issues again.

Our company has about 26,000 users on it. It's been extremely good for us. There are some performance issues that we have to work through. We are testing its limits but it's quite scalable.

Support can be a hit or miss depending on the engineer. I've worked with some very smart engineers that help you get to the root of the problem easily. On the other hand, with some engineers, they go through the bread-and-butter responses and sometimes that takes a while to get to the issue at hand.

I don't know as it was set up a long time ago.

This product does a lot so it would depend on what you are doing. I would recommend to use this software.

There are some improvements that the product can make in regards to the reporting solutions and data warehousing, It should also improve with the way the screens work. Currently, it is one of the best solutions out there and it has a lot of functionality. It could be better though.

In my opinion, the most important criteria while selecting a vendor is how responsive the organization is to your needs and that plays a big part. I know a lot of people with this software who have their own personal implementations or ways to do it. You can get into some issues that are unique to your own. When an organization is always willing to communicate and is flexible, that helps a lot.

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.

The Project Portfolio Management software helped get all of your projects, all of our project costs, and all of our people working on those projects gathered together in one single place so we know what we're working on, and where we're spending our money.

The main benefit of using the SaaS (software as a service) platform is that everything is taken care of for us. We don't need to buy the hardware. We don't need to do the installation. We don't need to do the upgrades. That's all done for us. It's just handled.

It gives us a better sense of what people are working on and where we're spending our money. It also lets us know what things are actually costing. So sometimes projects that aren't valuable are costing a lot of money. It gives us that information. It lets us know if we have enough people to take on additional projects, or if we don't have enough people, and we've got to make some hard decisions about those projects.

It's a single database, so all the information goes in one single place, and there are common workflows and processes, common forms and pages to fill out. We have the same information on these projects across business units and business divisions, and then within given teams, and we have that same common repository to view information.

Resource management is the key, so making sure we have the right people working on the right projects, and we have enough people to manage those projects. It gives the ability to add some prioritization and ranking of those projects as well.

So the only thing that’s missing is that the dashboards do not go into enough detail. The user interface and the user experience can be improved.

One of the things they're doing now is they're putting that new user experience in, a new user interface which is very simple and easy to use. It's something that people can understand easily without training, but it's still very limited. It only covers a little bit of the product. It covers just very basic project and task management. You cannot go as deep into it into the more detailed task management, or more projects, or in idea management, and so on. I'd like to extend that user experience into other areas and deeper.

It's stable. It's been around a long time.

It scales as far as you want to go, so there are no issues.

My impressions of technical support are a little mixed. You can get some very good people, or you can get a little less junior people. So sometimes you get your answer right away; sometimes it may take a little bit longer, but you can always get your answer. There are a lot of good resources out there. There's a great community, so you get a lot of good information and answers from the user community.

It's a very good solution. You get a lot of value out of it. If you're bringing it into an organization, the software is only part of the challenge. There are also the people and processes that you already have. Go in stages. Start with a step, and then take a bigger step. Don't try to do it all at once. Try to do a phased implementation.

• 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.

The most valuable feature is work flow management. We really work with the business to make sure that we have an end-to-end reporting of the work flow tool for delivery for implementation and design for our customers.

We've been live now for three years, so now we're just really starting to get some really good data, which is helping drive head count, budgets, and cycle time. That data is probably the most important thing to us right now. It took us a while to get to the user adoption phase and get that data in there, but I would say that the output of it and then managing it to drive the business direction from this point forward is probably the most important aspect for us.

From an admin perspective on the business side, one thing I'd like to have is a drag-and-drop feature. I think that anytime you can maximize your effort and try to automate it, it definitely makes the admin user perspective a little bit better. 

Also, I would say the intuitiveness needs to grow even more exponentially than it has, and I think with the project hopper and things like that, you're going to see that type of vision grow. 

From an admin perspective, it needs to be more predictive. It's not as predictive as I would like to see.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We just upgraded to 14.2, and when we went from 13.1 to 13.3, we were very buggy. There were a lot of browser issues, performance issues, lag time, but this upgrade has been virtually seamless. A couple little tweaks here and there, but not in this version.

We started with a very small pilot in the central area. We expanded to the continental United States, and then we just brought on Canada, and also then looking to expand to Latin America. Within that, we have different groups that are using the tool in different ways, but still trying to report on a holistic view. I would say the scalability is definitely growing in an upward fashion.

I wasn't involved in the original setup, but the upgrade was much more simplistic than the first round. From a business perspective, it wasn't difficult.

I would look at ROI and really try to assess what type of information is going to drive the success of your company. If PPM could assist in doing that by either reducing cycle times or giving you real data in order to drive the direction of your business, then go with PPM.