Broadcom Clarity Reviews

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 years now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most valuable features are:

• Scalability: CA PPM supports the approach of starting simple with continuous improvements and additional scope/complexity. This enables the system to adapt and grow together with organization maturity.
• Flexibility: CA PPM consists of several integrated modules which can be implemented in a combination that brings the most benefit. Also, each module can be easily adjusted to fit the organization’s needs and business processes.

Centralization of all projects into one tool using a standardized way of prioritization improved the visibility of current and planned spending against company’s goals and strategies in the portfolio.

Standardized status reporting and dependency management improved the awareness of business stakeholders and enabled comparisons across the whole organization.

Resource planning based on actual project performance improved the forecasting accuracy and sped up the project delivery by highlighting the potential resource shortages early enough to take corrective actions.

The user interface seems a bit outdated in some modules, while the most frequent modules have already been updated to a modern look and feel.

I have been using CA PPM for 10 years.

We have not had stability issues. The solution is available as SaaS as well as on-premise.

We have not had scalability issues. Scalability is one of the strengths of the solution.

I rate support 9 out of 10.

We did not have a previous solution.

Initial setup is easy as the solution can be implemented in an agile way. Different modules can be implemented independently and with different complexity.

Licensing is based on the type of operations the user does in the system. That is why it is important to understand which roles will be using the system and what role they play in the business process to be able to optimize the licensing cost.

We did not evaluate other options.

Do not get overwhelmed by the solution’s options and capabilities. Start small with the areas which are the most important for your business and then grow continuously using the agile implementation approach.

PPM provides the ability for staff (employees and contractors) in the entire IT organization to track time against specific investments and other work. And we can extract the data to analyze what our resources are working on. It also allows us to perform high-level resource planning.

By using PPM, we centralize where IT resources are tracking their time and eliminate the use of other tools such as spreadsheets.This enables us to gather data on what our resources are working on.

Reporting could be improved. Both the user interface and administration of Jaspersoft is very confusing and not user-friendly.

In my current organization, we have been using it for about two years.

We are on SaaS and system availability is close to 99%.

We have not had scalability issues with the application itself. However, we ran into issues with interface using XML Open Gateway (XOG) when we are injecting mass data into the application (such as resource assignment).

We use CA support and the support engineers are very knowledgeable about PPM. They have experts with deep knowledge in area where we have issues.

We did not have a previous solution.

We are on SaaS and the initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I do not deal with pricing or licensing.

I was not part of the evaluation process in this organization.

I strongly recommend to using CA Service for their expertise. Also, minimize the configuration as much as possible (stay out-of-the-box). Although PPM is highly configurable, getting to know how various functions work together in the tool is much more important than changing a label on a screen to meet a specific requirement!

The most valuable part is related to portfolio management in the home menu. We can add attributes in new and existing pages from the administration section.

In comparison to other PPM tools, these features are clearer in this solution. We can also make ranking rules, in order to select the right projects to put inside the portfolio.

Our organization, a consulting firm, is working with CA. Based on this, the CA PPM tool is one of the main services this company offers to the other organizations and configures it for them.

There should be the improvement in their strategy to align the organization with the Portfolio Management section. It should be visible in the application.

However, I see that most of the usage of the application is in terms of the technical parts. For example, when the customer wants to add new sections or make custom objects.

I have had experience working in the PPM field as an intern for around a year. However, I have used this solution for five months.

There were no stability related issues.

I did not encounter any problems in respect to the scalability. The capacity is good and it depends on the data that a company wants to enter.

I used Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project in other companies. My current company has the main concept/business of PPM and they use the CA PPM tool to offer their customers.

In terms of the licensing, I know that there are different types of demos and licensing available, such as studio or a normal user.

In this case, the user can try most of the modules. But for the administrator demo, I saw that the user only has accessibility rom the Admin menu

For a limited time, I tried out the Project Objects - Progressive Project Management Approach (PPMA) solution. It was also useful and user-friendly with a graphical environment that helps the user not be bored.

• Try to understand the most important parts of the system and make a relationship between the different parts of the portal.
• Try to engage in knowledge sharing, in order to boost fast learning and be more agile to use the system.
• Have specialists for the technical parts and the configuration aspects.
• Have other employees for the front-end functionalities.

CA PPM has given our organization a way to collect, share, and store data in one place as opposed to many. Prior to the install of CA PPM, we had to pull data from many different sources to compile even a standard executive status report. Since the implementation of CA PPM, we can now ad-hoc a report or dashboard that has all information (allocated project hours, resource lists, risks and issues, and other data, for example) in a matter of minutes.

The Gantt chart is very well built and easy to use. The tool comes out-of-the-box with an MS Project clone called Workbench, and for the most part it is useful, but there is an interface that can also be utilized to connect directly with MS Project. The best feature in my opinion is the Jaspersoft reporting suite as this is well crafted and, not only contains many useful reports out of the box, but creating ad-hoc reports is as simple as drag-and-drop. It is a very powerful tool and ad-hoc reports can be turned into a standard report that shows up in all user libraries. The export of the reports or dashboards can be done in several formats, including MS Excel, MS Word, PDF, and XML. I have to say that exporting into Excel is the best I have ever seen as the resultant spreadsheet is very clean and well laid out. There is little to no adjusting that has to be done on the spreadsheet.

Scheduling and resource allocations are very clunky at best. Being able to have a standard calendar that a resource could access that would give them a schedule by day would be very helpful, but to date there is no solution (including third party vendors) to make this happen. For a resource to review his or her schedule, the process involves several steps and is not user-friendly. Getting CA to work on issues, even directly after the install, was and remains very difficult and slow. As one of the administrators of the system, it frustrates me greatly when we discover a bug in the system or need customizations done (which we pay for) and they take an unacceptable amount of time to complete the task. They are very sales-driven, but once the product is in-place, the support seems to dry up a bit.

Tech support and customer service on the part of CA is very lacking. Even at the CA World user conference that they hold every year, it seems that the third-party vendors offer much more support and education than CA does, anf that does not speak well for a technology company. They have been very slow to address bugs or other issues with our system. The best help I seem to get when I need information or assistance, comes from the CA Community boards on their website. I tend to get much quicker answers from other users than I do when I call the CA support line.

Our company previously used a home-grown project solution. It worked very well and was very user-friendly, but unfortunately did not have the capability to disseminate data from different regions or parts of our organization. Reporting in the system was very minimal and we utilized several solutions (including MS SharePoint) to share deliverables and other collaborative data to complete projects. We did evaluate other solutions (such as Oracle) but based on our organization’s needs, and promises made by the CA sales team on the system capabilities, we found that CA PPM was the best option for us.

The initial set-up and configuration was very time-consuming and complex. Over a year after the initial install we are still fighting through some issues. Building the user database can be very daunting, but the worst is getting the projects migrated over from our old system. There was a lot of heartburn from that process, even though CA system architects promised us a smooth migration. Setting up Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) and Organizational Business Structures (OBS) are also very complex and sometimes confusing tasks. Cross-over from divisions within the organization can be very difficult.

Our implementation was completed by CA Systems Architects in collaboration with our in-house team responsible for the system health and performance. The best advice I can give to anyone thinking of utilizing this tool is to create a rock-solid requirements document and make sure that you stick to your guns on what you want out of the system. If the System Architect that they provide you is not giving good customer service or is not willing to step back and explain the configurations that are being done on the system, stop the person and contact your sales representative immediately. Do not proceed with the configuration until you get the answers you are looking for, or your go-live can be pushed back quite a bit.

Licensing can be quite expensive, depending on the size of the organization. Even though there are many types of licenses (full, restricted and limited to name a few), the full licenses are the only way to utilize the system as intended and the cost per user is very high.

For many of the project creation and lifecycle functionalities, it is quite useful, but the overall user feel and agility is lacking. In the gaming industry, project lifecycles are very short compared to a standard PMP model (typically a 16-18 week cycle for larger projects and as few as two days on some of the smaller projects). Because there can be many changes to the project team, schedule, project scope and other factors, we needed a system that could be agile. While CA PPM has many tools and reports, being able to make changes quickly or being able to pull specific data out of the system requires a large effort for a small amount of information. A specific issue I have with the tool is the fact that there is no true project schedule in the system (calendar view). The Gantt chart is very helpful and well built, but there is no resource schedule that can be pulled out of the system for an employee who wants to know when they are traveling, how long they will be on a customer site, or whether or not there is a double-booking or other conflict. This can be very frustrating to our teams, schedulers, and managers.

The best advice I can give anyone looking at this tool for their organizational Portfolio/Program and Project Management needs is ask for very specific details from your sales representative. If they say that the system can do something, make them prove it in a demo. Many of the functions that they sold us on don’t exist or are much more challenging than they lead on. When it comes time to install, make sure the System Architect they send is comfortable with walking clients through the system processes and configurations. Our architect was not friendly and was clearly uncomfortable in front of an “audience”. He was also very confrontational in many instances. If you start to see this in your architect, halt all proceedings and get a replacement ASAP. If not, you can be looking at a lengthy delay in deployment.

The capacity to plan and manage projects. It has the profile of every person who works at the company.

Perfect for centralized planning and viewing the capacity of work of each group which is developing applications

The product doesn't have a way to simulate different kinds of plans. When you have a new plan with a high priority, there isn't a way to simulate the impact of the new plan

We have been using the solution for four years.

We did not have any stability issues.

I wasn’t involved at the beginning of the project. During my stay at the bank, we didn’t perform any upgrade with CA PPM.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

We did not use another solution previously.

I didn't attend the initial setup, but I heard that it was difficult.

We did not evaluate any other options.

I can say that it’s a product with high potential.

Project management in CA PPM is elastic and comprehensive. You can adjust the solution to any organization quickly and easily.

Studio is a powerful component that lets you add and modify features in an easy way without writing code. These features include new objects, attributes, views, process, and portlets.

The interface needs improvement. The new UI/UX (from version 15.1) is modern and more intuitive, but it only covers a small piece of the solution. The rest is the classic UI.

A new UX in CA PPM is the answer to the problem with complexity and the huge options in classic UI, which is the cause of problems using the solution for a beginner. The new UX is quite easy to use, but only covers time sheet management and part of project management. Switching between new and old interface is tiring. I understand that to develop a new UX needs time, but integration between the new and the old UI/UX should be better.

I have been using CA PPM for eight years.

We have not had stability issues.

Technical support is good, but fixes for bugs have a very long life cycle of many months.

We did have a previous solution. However, the class of the tool was much lower, so the tools are not comparable.

The initial setup was quite complex, especially in the financial area. But the solution can be usable after one hour of setup by an expert.

The price is high, but the solution is very comprehensive. The price is acceptable only if the solution is core for the organization.

CA PPM is one of the best solutions in the PPM area, but it is quite expensive.