Broadcom Clarity Reviews

I am a project manager/program manager, too. So I look at it from the high level also, which is a lot more difficult I think for the program. For it to go back to the initiative, figure out exactly what you are spending, how much you are spending on it, and which projects are included in it. 

From a project standpoint, I think it actually works really well, because it is much more simplistic, and it is at that lower level. So, you can track your risks, issue some changes, and it is a lot easier than when you go up and roll up to that program level.

This is a hard one, because some people just see it as overhead. Everybody is used to just doing it within their Excel spreadsheets within their teams. Some of it is just kind of a roll up of data, such as, what is our milestone for when we are going to get the BSD done? What is our milestone for code drops? 

So, there is definitely a mixed view, even from myself. I can see the benefits of it, and I can get the data out to be able to report on it. However, I also feel like it is a lot of overhead.

Probably the data itself. We do a lot of extracts from Clarity. There is not a lot of reporting within the tool itself. So, we actually export it, run reports, and roll out that data.

It was very interesting, because we did get to see the newest version. There are a lot features that I really can't wait to actually get my hands on. 

When we upgrade into the cloud, we are still going to be a version behind. So it is hard to say what I would want in it, because I have seen a lot of the things that I would want in it. They are going to be in it once we actually do the upgrade.

From a stability perspective, it is very stable. We do not have a lot of changes to it. However, we also do not upgrade as often as the tool is upgraded.

We leave that in the hands of our upper management on when we actually upgrade. So, we have done multiple upgrades, and we have configured it a lot. Going forward in December when we do the CA PPM, we are going out-of-the-box. Therefore, we do not have do a lot of the customizations. We can still configure, but we do not have to customize it.

We have not used technical support. Our PMO usually deals with any problems, questions, and they work through the technical solutions.

We see it as overhead. Let us collect all the data in one place. Which, it is always nice to have everything in one place, but it does cause that overhead. So a lot of the teams are not comfortable with it. They are going to track it separately. We are just a data gatherer to say, "Okay, what is the last date we are going to code drop? When are we going to be SD?" So, a lot of overhead.

We use our product for the following:

• Time-tracking
• Project and portfolio management
• Resource management, which is part of the timekeeping. 

Our organization, being a utility organization, does a lot of projects in two different methodologies. Being able to track all of the projects with all of the details of those projects, and being able to move projects along from a process perspective, that is really beneficial. Off-sheet would be much more difficult.

In the version that we are in, it has been able to collect all the data, and in some ways, provide dashboards of aggregated data. 

We are not currently using the existing version. I think we have a need for more portfolio management and intuitive resource management, which are met with that next version. We are just not there yet. 

I do not know if I can answer that as I am still new to using the product.

Scalability is great. It is very manageable and can scale in different areas. One of the limitations would be mapping our current agile processes in the same tool set without obviously integrating to a different type of tool set within the same portfolio.

I have not personally used the technical support.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

I have used some of the other products on the market before, and some of those are a little bit more user-friendly, but again that may be solved with the newer version.

From what I have seen, the new UX is pretty impressive, which meets that user-friendly, more adaptable, or agile, user-friendly solution. 

I believe firmly in process management, so from an organizational perspective understand your processes, then be able to look at this tool and know the full capabilities of the tool before you just install it. Sometimes companies will install a tool to handle the basics and not ever grow to its full process and tool alignment, which could be beneficial.

Demand, Resource, Project Portfolio Management, for my business consulting services, PMO services to other clients.

Capacity and demand of the resources, optimize the response times of my requirements, detect the control points of the process of attention to our clients, a collaborative environment, notes, remember agreements, efficiency in the times.

Look and feel of the user experience.

Two and a half years.

No, its normal.

None.

Eight out of 10.

We started with the default use of the solution with some parameters, then we were increasing automations, control points, and other more technical issues.

For all the functionalities of the solution, the price is in the market range, since it is a product which offers governance issues and supports the digital transformation, which is where we will go in the next year.

Yes. Planview, Daptiv, MS Project, Changepoint.

My advice is to start using the solution almost as it comes, something basic, simple, that it already provides. Then we develop small consultancies, configurations by functionalities, demand, projects, portfolios, resources, inventory of applications, services, products, etc., until arriving at a model of strategic government.

Besides offering software development services, PMO, attention to demand of requirements, we are a CA Technologies Partner, for consulting services, consulting and strategy of governance, methodology, processes, as it is what we do with our clients.

We've used this solution as an enterprise tool. It allowed us to bring organizations together for communication, planning, and cost. Outside of our IT department, we are integrated heavily with our marketing areas, both on the wireless and the wireline side. That includes marketing, sales, operations, products, new business development, and networking. All those areas come together and are able to communicate within the tool.

This solution has brought our groups a lot closer together and allowed them to communicate much easier rather than using emails and spreadsheets. Data is now in a central location. It's simplified the funnel process from our business partners, particularly into the IT and the network areas.

It has facilitated a much better ranking process, so that we can focus on what's most important for the business partners. It has helped us align our projects and portfolios to the overall business or IT strategy. It enabled proper management of the funnel and proper ranking and priority setting.

I'm really excited about seeing a simplified user interface. We've starting looking at the new UI with version 15. I'm somewhat disappointed in the limitation of functionality there. We'd like to see that expanded much more. As I understand it, you can't use custom attributes in the new UI. That limits what we do, because we have a number of customizations that we've made. I would like to see better performance, as always.

Our environment is fairly stable, but it is not as fast as what we'd like. Stability-wise, it's up and running. There are performance issues. It's obviously not as fast as we'd like it to be. The biggest complaint is too many clicks to get to where you need to be in order to perform a function.

It scaled very well. We have around 6,500 users. We have had no scalability issues.

My group doesn't use technical support as much as our development team, but we seem to have a great relationship with CA.

We actually moved from using three different project management tools into a single system. By the time I came along, the choice was made. There was a pretty heavy process of reviewing vendors with similar products, grading and rating them, and making a decision.

I was involved in the setup. I came from a background of not knowing the product, so it was complex at the time. We've grown to understand it since.

I would suggest not customizing it. It makes it much simpler that way and makes upgrades easier. It makes long-term maintenance much easier and allows you to use existing functionality.

The primary use case is managing projects.

Visibility to where we are on projects. It tells someone where we are; if we're in trouble or not. I do look forward to getting more Risks/Issues functionality. I think that will help it even further. But pretty well, it's visability.

• Easy to use, visually
• The new UX is intuitive, which is cool

The features I use the most are the planning, the Kanban layout.

Having everything in one solution. Right now I don't really have to bounce back and forth between the new UX and CA PPM, so that's a good thing. But, improve Resource Planning. 

To be honest, I'd like to see having it work internally. Catch up to the features that are available in the solution. I think it's more on our side than on the CA side.

No problems. Some in our company have mentioned have mentioned they've encountered small problems, but I don't see them.

I really haven't put that to the test yet.

Although I wasn't involved in the initial setup, I understand that it was not straightforward, very complex. We were told by our headquarters that this is the solution we're going to use. "Here you go. Here, figure it out."

Internally, it would have been easier if our headquarters had used it in the way it was intended, and then, shared that knowledge with us. I don't believe that happened. So, we did go outside and hire a consultant to bring knowledge in-house. It helped us better understand how to use the tool.

I think the new UX is going to be better for project planning. There are some features I'm looking forward to in future releases. Some of the stuff we saw in the roadmap: program planning, roadmapping, dependencies. The Resource Planning, I look forward to using that a little more.

When choosing a product/vendor the important criteria for me are

• easy to use
• quick results; being able to provide a status in two seconds

• having anyone else sign in, where I can display my screen, and they know what's happening with the project. That's important to me.

I rate it an eight out of 10 because it's "almost there" and it's probably the best solution I've seen in my career. It's not a 10 because I see what's coming and we aren't there yet. We use what we have now, but the next release will help move the needle further.

I don't know if I would give advice. I would just tell them how it's worked for us.

It brings visibility and one central source of truth, as opposed to a bunch of different processes and tools. It helps us effectively enable our processes.

• Portfolio management
• Resource management
• Project management, of course

User-friendliness, I think that's the key. Right now it's really clunky. We're also looking to upgrade, but an upgrade is not going to fix everything. The new UX is good, but there are still a lot of limitations. Once they work through those kinks and get those limitations removed, we'll be able to upgrade.

One of the things we use is timesheets. In the timesheet UX, you can't do things like splitting time, managing overtime versus regular time, very easily. That would be helpful. 

Financials are okay, but there's a lot of room for improvement in financials.Financial plans, if those could be made so that you're not always grouping your financial data by predefined attributes, that would be helpful for us.

It's pretty stable. It doesn't crash, I would give stability a nine or 10 out of 10.

Earlier, there were major issues, but since 2015, when we moved to SaaS, there haven't been.

Scalability is pretty decent. We are on SaaS, so CA takes care of scalability.

Current tech support is much better than the previous technical support. Most of the time they answer our questions quickly, but it's hit or miss. Sometimes it does take some follow-ups and escalations, but 70%, 80% of the time they are quick.

Recently, what happened was we had a request to backup our database, so that the development team could start to move to production. But nobody ever got back to us, and they were supposed to. The team kept waiting, so I had to do escalate it.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but I have been involved in upgrades. They were pretty straightforward. CA took care of everything, we just did the testing.

I wouldn't be able to say there is one particular criterion that's important when selecting a vendor, it's a combination of all of them that we will look at, like 

• trust
• cost
• the value they're going to bring.

I would rate it eight out of 10, actually.

I would say definitely look at this solution but understand your business needs first. There is a tendency on the customer side to look for "one size fits all." That's never the case. So make sure Clarity is really a best fit for your business needs. Otherwise, you are just buying a fancy, glorified timesheet tool.

We use it for project-tracking, budgeting, and resource-tracking.

The budgeting. With budgeting would be the resource-tracking, because we budget our resources. Overall budgeting is probably the best use of Clarity for us, because we can see how much we are allowed to spend, how much we have spent, and then how much is left over.

It has all of the features that currently we need.

Project managers have insight into everything regarding their projects. They can do anything they want, such as update and edit their projects within Clarity. They use it every single day, in every way that they can, to keep it updated and to track their project features. It has made project-tracking much simpler and easier.

What I do is just keep things running as much as I can on our end, so I think that would be something that our project managers would better answer, because they are the ones that use it. I just keep it running. 

We have had issues, but that goes with anything. Nothing is perfect, so we work through those and we do what we can when those issues come up to get them fixed quickly. Nothing big; nothing that has obviously stopped us from using it.

We use CA technical support whenever we need to. We try to fix as much as we can on our end, but obviously there are things we can't do that CA has to do for us. However, they are always very helpful. They are always very willing to work with us to figure out what is going on, and to help us out in fixing any issues.

I was not around during the initial setup.

I was not a part of the decision-making process.

I like the new UX. I think it is cool. We pretty much only use it for the time-tracking, which probably more companies do than not. The UX is super-simple, very user-friendly, colorful, and fun. So, I think it is really awesome, and we have received a lot of positive feedback from our time-trackers.

It is something our company continues to use and likes to use. Otherwise, we would not be using it. It gets the job done, and it helps us get our jobs done. 

Detailed schedule makes estimation of resources, and resource forecasting, easy and meaningful.

This product is good for resource management and project management. I have managed detailed schedules with great success.

Reporting is not good as they keep on changing reporting environment.

Not anything significant.

Yes, scalability may be issue in a SaaS environment but can be resolved by proper configuration.

Okay, but not that great. Over the years the support level keeps on dropping.

No, though worked with Daptiv and HPE PPM. Daptiv is not ready for a big corporation.

Initial setup is not complex. It sometimes gets ugly and complex after customization.

This project management software is a little bit costly compared to others, but it is mature. Customers should understand this product is geared towards project management, not financial management.

We evaluated CA PPM vs Micro Focus PPM.

This product needs technical expertise. Purchasing the software is not sufficient and support is very important.