Broadcom Clarity Reviews

There are many use cases for Broadcom Clarity PPM. We have worked with large telecommunications companies, enterprises projects, and maintenance projects. We provide ideas with the life cycle management, then we convert the idea to be used in Broadcom Clarity PPM.

The most valuable feature is the portfolio functionality because we have the ability to work with different scenarios and many kinds of financial management. We can integrate with ERP, and with other solutions from third-party vendors. The financial model in Broadcom Clarity PPM, it's the most valuable aspect.

The solution could improve the way the workflow is developed. I think they could be more dynamic because they are in a way static. They're very powerful, but they don't have any interaction with end-users.

In a future release, I'd like to see more stable chargeback procedures, because they are not as synchronized as they should be. Sometimes they do not provide real-time information. We have to use another solution to receive this information.

I have used Broadcom Clarity PPM since version 8. 

Broadcom Clarity PPM is stable.

Broadcom Clarity PPM is scalable because we can use it to do a lot of things in the area of organization. This is was the main solution for many enterprises to manage projects, financials, portfolios, workflows, and to manage all the integrations.

The initial setup is easy, but it could be better. It could be more intuitive because there are a lot of configurations that must be done manually, such as environment variables. If there could be a wizard for the users to use it would make it easier for the users and administrators.

We can deploy the solutions with two or three consultants for large organizations and if you want you can train them to do the maintenance.

Technically some procedures are difficult, such as day-to-day queries, because they have their own structure. It's not a common structure for everyone. You should know the SQL  language to understand all the queries, this should be universal, it is a necessity.

I would recommend to those that want to implement this solution is to understand all the project management terms that are related to large projects, such as time management, financial management, and resource management. It is important for the solution to be deployed by people who know all these management roles and are familiarized with these types of solutions.

I rate Broadcom Clarity PPM an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution an eight because there are more solutions on the market that are easier to manage.

I used to work for CA Technologies. After that, I worked for CA Partners. So I have some experience implementing these solutions. As an architect, I have designed solutions. 

We work with projects. We have integrated the solution where we open tickets into them, and change management. We open tickets, we track all the tickets, we re-work all the details, then we turn it into an idea in PPM. Then we convert it into a project and manage portfolios. We work with all Service Management administrations and then we have to work with the project solution.

We work with IT service desks. We have worked with financial services, as well. We have here in Mexico some construction enterprises working with the solution.

We have an integrated Service Management with third party solutions, with discovery solutions, with asset management solutions from other brands of their solution, and monitoring solutions, and with in-house solutions. We also integrate this Service Management with SAP financial solutions.

In terms of how Broadcom Clarity PPM has improved our clients' organizations, our users are working better with the solution because the first level of attention is now in charge of our configuration in Service Management. So we don't have any analyzed work with the first level of attention. With the second level, yes, the experts are working with the solution, but we were able to optimize the first level for this kind of attention. The first attention for the end user is now in charge of the solution.

The feature that I have found most valuable is the XFlow, that interface is pretty cool. We have worked with IT PAM with the first two commissions. We have mainly worked with those companies, because we work a lot with process automation, to perform workflows to optimize everything within the organization.

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.

Additionally, I'd like to see more compatibility with the Active REST connection because we have worked with SOAP and WSDL but we need more compatibility with the Active REST connection.

I have been working with Broadcom Clarity PPM for about six, seven years.

I think Broadcom Clarity PPM is a pretty strong tool. We use a lot of components to increase functionality, and with their latest versions, I think things have improved. I think we sell their roadmap - a wide roadmap to cover that.

Broadcom Clarity PPM's scalability is okay. Obviously, it could be better. But now we have great scalability with Service Management.

Our clients are medium and large enterprises. For example, I implemented for a company in Columbia which had about 3000 users.

I think that the solution's usage has been decreased because the solution has a lot of competition right now. For example, Service Now is improving the end user interface and the final digital interaction and I think Clarity Service Management is not. I feel that Service Management is not developing more functionality to cover the end user's demands.

In terms of technical support, from one to 10, I think it is a seven, because lately the support agents take a lot of time to give an answer. Sometimes we have issues and the attention is not as fast as we need. We have to wait for a long time to get a response.

I'm currently using ServiceNow and Service Management with some monitoring solutions from Broadcom.

Most users that switch from other solutions to Clarity PPM were using open source solutions. Maybe they were using BMC Remedy, but it would be kind of weird that they jumped from ServiceNow to Clarity Service Management. I haven't seen that. They switched from open source to Clarity Service Management, and from BMC to Clarity Service Management, but I've never seen from ServiceNow to Clarity Service Management.

The initial installation is kind of simple, following the research, but the complexity begins when we need to customize part of the structure. For example, when we need to create a new field on the system we have to stop services and that's not possible in a protected environment. In a quality assurance environment, we need to open a change request ticket just to create one field within the database. That should be easier to manage and to handle. We haven't been able to create one internal field effecting the services.

We have performed deployments that take from two months to six months. It depends on the customer size, because we have customers with many customizations, so we have to change some things within Service Management. This is because out of the box, it's not possible to cover all the customer's demands.

The most important solutions here in Mexico are BMC, ServiceNow, and Broadcom. Five years ago, Broadcom was one of the most important solutions in Mexico, but now we made a transition from CA Technologies to Broadcom. They lost many customers here because they were not able to renew their licensing. Maybe Broadcom lost a lot of customers because of the service.

The main differences, pros and cons, between Clarity PPM, and ServiceNow are that Broadcom Clarity PPM is easier to use and easier to manage. Clarity PPM has a more composite structure. That means that displaying, making changes, and performing customizations are more difficult for the end users. The consultants can deal with that, but sometimes the customers are not able to identify some components and to identify some configurations that you can perform in Clarity Service Management. Whereas in ServiceNow, you can do that with only a button. That's the difference.

Just to be clear, when we are designing and recreating the solution design, we have to be fair with the scope. We need to use all the components to improve the functionality. We have to use all the components available. XFlow, IT PAM, all the tools that can be used to improve the functionality, because competition is getting very hard. This makes it very difficult because I have 12 years working with CA components and CA technologies. So for me to switch from CA, from Broadcom, is sometimes kind of hard because I am a Broadcom implementer.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Broadcom Clarity PPM an eight.

The user interface should be improved to be able to receive any challenges from the users. They expect an easier interface, an easier way to find the sections, and an easier way to find the menus. I think that would be the biggest improvement.

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.

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.