There were probably about five or six metrics that we used. As a result, the groups that I supported were consistently ranked at the absolute top of the organization, as we were leveraging these built-in tools for tracking.
The dynamism of the application where you can modify it to fit your needs is valuable. For example, you can create fields, metrics, and measures on the fly. You don't have to be limited to what the out-of-the-box format would be. It allows you to generate fields, metrics, and reports off of that with relative ease.
The most useful feature for me as an implementer of Broadcom Clarity PPM is its extensibility. The tool is pretty extensible, and I haven't had any issues with it in terms of it getting used for multiple scenarios and for multiple clients where there's a need for high customization. Broadcom Clarity PPM is a very, very customizable tool, so you can pretty much implement any business process on it with no issues.
The reporting tools are superior to what was there before, which was someone crunching through an Excel spreadsheet. I've been able to do status reports through the projects, which has given visibility to my manager, and that's an improvement.
One of the things that have always been a bit painful is the integration with reporting utilities. The current integration is with Jaspersoft, and there are a number of difficulties with that. If you're using out-of-the-box fields and everything, it is a bit slow and clunky. It has a drag-and-drop interface for the users. On the backend side, there is a report designer. They haven't given or allowed me any training on it yet. So, it has been a bit limited in its features. On one of the earlier report utilities, they had one called Actuate, which had VBA as its base programming language, and you could do quite dynamic things behind the scenes, whereas the Jaspersoft interface seems rather locked. So, you're limited in your options. Being a programmer, you like to have room to be able to invent and create rather than just being limited to a few selection boxes.
One of the major pain points for me when it comes to Broadcom Clarity PPM is the new UI. The new UI is very good in terms of functionality and the drag and draw features, but it's not very responsive. When I say that it's not very responsive, what I mean is that sometimes, the tool is not very user-friendly. For example, a user saves a value on the form, but the tool doesn't give any indication to the user that the value has been saved. Some users are moving from the classic UI to the new UI, and end up getting confused because on the classic UI, when you click "Save", it'll save the information and you'll get an indication that it was saved. With the new UI, it auto saves the information, but it doesn't give an indication in the form of a popup box that "this form has been saved", or any type of message indicating that the information was successfully saved. It's been confusing for users who move to the new UI because of that. The users don't understand when the values are being saved or not being saved, even if there's an auto-save feature in the new UI.
PMO Principal at GAF Materials / Building Materials
Nov 26, 2017
A little bit better financial management. Right now it is more accountant-related, the financial management - of course, it's finance, it has to be financial. But it should be a little bit easier for project managers.
PPM Product Owner at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Nov 26, 2017
I am going to be maintaining both new UX screens, which the blueprints make look like it is going to be really easy, but we would still have to be maintaining new UX screens as well as classic views for those functionalities that are not yet available in the new UX.
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.
The only real improvement from my side - I'm spoiled by things like Trello, with the very easy user interface, things like Basecamp - it's very much a static software project. If I was to focus on something it would be that user interface; making that something that is a joy to use, instead of something that feels like data entry.