CA PPM Reviews

The rich content of the solution makes it possible to quickly start and grow your PPM maturity. Next to that it can be nicely integrated within your whole back office (HR, Finance, P2P, ...). It is one of the only PPM tools that has a strong resourcemanagement capability and senario planning options on portfolio level. And when the standard is not sufficient for you, there is the ability to easily add your own configration items (objects, attributes) and for further automation of your PPM implementation there are the processes that enables you to automate your PPM capability to your needs (send notifications, automated reporting, etc.). Another strong capability is cost management which enables you an end 2 end overview of all your cost and budget throughout your portfolios.

CA PPM is a comprehensive solution that can be overwhelming. And because you can do it all, there is a lot you can do/need to do. So therefor it requires understanding of project portfolio management and cannot be compared with a project scheduling tool or a replacement of excel. Where excel stops CA PPM starts. It currenttly is not strong in programme management, other than the possibility to group and to organise projects in programmes.

CA PPM is a very comprehensive tool for project portfolio management. It is very complete, so therefor it is important that you understand your own maturity and roadmap before you start implementing CA PPM.

Single source of thruth on the overall project portfolio. Clear insights in resource demand and capacity. Support of the annual (!?) budgetting and project initiation process. Clear insights in the overall project cost, spend and forecast. Automation of PPM processes through workflows and thus reducing administration in PPM. Integration of PPM and Finance and securing the purchase to pay process which reduces lead time.

Easy to manage financials and teams with Clarity.

Like the connection to MSP that allows to import tasks into it.

FTE management is great feature as well.

Easy way to manage project risk and issues and keep a log of them.

Status reporting is great as well. Easy to copy one status report to the other and apply updates to old one.

Loading at times can be slow. Data export to excel can be messy at times. Also - the time scale can be messed up when looking at the detailed plans.

It's a great project management application. Takes a bit to get used to. Once you know what to do - it's a very powerful tool.

It's very great tool to manage FTE resources and vendors. At times the system can be slow.

It allows us to easily manage financials. I can easily filter by project manager and pull all 30+ of my projects. Being able to see which team members are allocated vs under allocated is easy.

CA PPM is an easy way for our department to track our projects. You can easily see the projects timeline and hours to complete. It was very helpful for us when changing our processes as we could easily identify tasks that we needed to streamline.

The interface is not the most user-friendly. However, we are about to upgrade to the newer version, so hopefully that will help. The biggest annoyance is the inability to easily move an entire project's timeline. Our projects are constantly changing, so our timelines move around a lot. In order to move a timeline, you have to move every single task's timeframe. It is very time consuming.

I wouldn't recommend for lots of small projects. Works very well for large projects with a large number of tasks.

We look to CA PPM to identify opportunities for process improvement. By looking at reporting, we can identify a task that is bottle-necking the timeline and find ways to fix it.

The best part of CA PPM is the ease of use and availability of multiple features or functionalities . Great UI and regular feature updates by CA . It is easy to setup and you do not have to be an experienced user to get going .

There is a lag in performance at times due to increase in number of workflows and data. Some of the Portfolio features are not the effective . The applications seems to be unstable at times when the load increases.

Excellent PPM Tool on a single platform which helps small to mid size companies in making better decisions . It offers a comprehensive project portfolio management capabilities you need to deliver on time and on budget. It is also available on cloud so for first time users this is a very good option to quickly start using and getting familiar with the tool, you do not have to invest much on the setup..

Provides good Time sheets, Resource and Project Management features. The insights the dashboards and the reports provide is very intuitive.

Help put a portfolio of resources, projects, and budgets into a more centralized setup and effectively manage each aspect using scorecards to objectively analyze and compare requirements across the complete portfolio.

The primary dislike of CA PPM has been the challenge to provide flexible reporting options. Debugging processes with Gel Scripts is a pain. Have to rely on the expertise of 3rd party teams who develop these scripts for development.

Establishing portfolio standards and metrics to help assess portfolio investments against business indicators, including ROI, break even analysis, revenue enhancement, quality improvements and other relevant statistics.

Customization of any of the dashboards. I love setting my home tab to all of the various schedule dashboard, action items, and late status reports. The Ad Hoc reporting feature is awesome once you get the hang of it.

Limited customization of reports unless you use external software outside of PPM, lots of bugs when you use the save and return feature inside of a project screen, lack of training documentation for the most recent version, very complicated UI and can be intimidating until you get the hang of it.

Take your time getting used to all of the features. Make sure you also put in place rules that your PMO team as well as IT team will follow as most of the features will be shared between departments.

This is the ultimate solution for project management. I can keep track of all my open projects from one screen and collaborate with other project managers and my IT department all at once. Updating my business owners has never been easier or on time. I have status alerts to advise when a report is late.

If I have multiple projects I am working on, I can spilt my hours and charge correct number of hours to each project .

I am unable to enter /edit time sheets if I miss the deadline at the month end, unless I have admin access

User friendly tool to track working hours of large IT implementations

Helps me in forecasting the chargeable hours for my team through the calendar feature, where team members can mark holidays , vacation etc .

My likes are:

CA PPM is intuitive and easy to use.

CA Clarity PPM can be configured flexibly.

Allows companies to centrally manage their portfolio of resources, projects & budgets

Internationally deployable.

Open integration using XML Open Gateway.

Single and multi-project management

Works best for: Med-sized Businesses or Enterprise.

My dislikes are:

User driven customization of the product is not fully supported by Clarity PPM.

CA PPM only allows data extraction to third party software and does not support full integration.

No social collaboration features

Project management software for all company needs. CA PPM is for employees who want to execute projects and programs in a successful and efficient manner. The main benefit is that CA PM provides project management optimization to ensure projects are delivered on time, on budget and according to requirements

I like that it is so customizable inside the program where you can set up all types of filters. This is the best part of Clarity.

I hate that it does not have alert features that can be customized. I have to rely on another team and what they deem are appropriate alerts. This does not meet my team's requirements.

Try another tool with alerts built in, and easier to customize reports

We are able to track resource allocations, their costs, hours, and timesheets, and run reports that better help us see where time is being spent.

Customization of the interface and filters. Customization of process and organization.

Good reporting functionality but only on demand. Very few real time indicators.

Old feeling, slow, not intuitive, not responsive or dynamic. Lots of clicks to do something. Few Drag and Drop here and there don’t make it responsive.

If your organization follow the Pmbok very seriously you might find this tool useful because it's complete and it can be heavily customize. I'm working in a more Agile environment and the lack of responsiveness makes us use other tools like CA Rally for day to day task activity. We use PPM only at the portfolio level with low level of detail and accuracy.

Portfolio, project and idea management. Project status report. Time-sheets. Benefits in the standardization of management reporting.

Project risk tracking, and time tracking work as expected, the software is relatively easy to use and simple.

The user interface is somewhat outdated, and features that would add value such as autocomplete for project selection are missing. Often difficult to find what you are looking for in a long list of items.

Tracking risk across multiple projects to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the risks to complete our projects. Additionally, we use Clarity to track resource allocation spend to each project over time.

My favorite part of Clarity is how easily you can configure the application as an end user. You can easily save different filters and views to display specific data each time the application is launched. Additionally, back end administrators can easily customize modules to fit specific needs of an organization.

I was most disappointed in the out of box reporting suite. I found the majority of the reports were not relevant or useful. We built custom reports to address the business needs. The second most disappointing feature is the user interface. The UI looks to be about 100 years old and is not overly intuitive. CA needs to focus on visual appeal within the tool's interface.

I recommend using Clarity if you have a very large organization that requires customized solutions. The greatest feature of Clarity is the ability to customize module and configure functionality. The tool is very functional, but not sexy.

I helped implement Clarity at a fortune 500 bank to allow them to track projects, resource allocations, and time entry. The tool provided excellent transparency around resource utilization. Another big value add was in using the tool to ensure money was being spent on projects that aligned with the top priorities and overall vision of the bank.

CA PPM is one of the best software product in the IT PPM market. CA PPM has consistently proved to be a leader in the Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management Software Applications, Worldwide. As a PPM practitioner and SME, I highly recommended CA PPM as it has rich project, program, portfolio, resource, financial and many other management functionality to enrich end-user experience and productivity. CA is doing a great job in rolling out new exciting features, add-on, third-party integration options etc.. More recently they acquired JasperSoft reporting tool, and integrated with PPM - it's pretty cool!

CA PPM Timesheet Mobile app has very limited functionalities, the core features such as task splitting option in the timesheet doesn't work or there is no such option available, and also most of the customizations are not available in the mobile app. In this mobile technology industry, CA is lacking with its product, in order to remain and sustain in the industry I think CA should release a better app with full PPM features to do not only timesheet management but also project/program/portfolio management etc., conveniently on their mobile phone.

CA should focus on improving his mobile timesheet app.

Optimizing and streamlining the projects, programs, portfolios and numerous others processes using CA PPM technology to drive growth, efficiency and productivity in the enterprise.

Clarity PPM allows my managers to allocate project resources with ease, and allows me to see where I have been assigned as a consultant.

There is a lot of excess clicking required when submitting timesheets, as in, there seems to be an inconvenient number of selecting and re-selecting task types.

Clear and concise project management and time tracking.

As a consultant, I need to keep track of billable and non-billable time. Clarity PPM helps me and my team to know our utilization levels and project resource allocation.

CA PPM is cross functional. It can be used in a myriad of industries

CA PPM struggles with the fact that it is so huge. It can be difficult for organizations implement without much training.

I've been able to help organizations organize their projects and get out of silos. I've been able to help organizations form Enterprise PMOs for better governance and realization of the work they're doing, as well as to strategize for future work.

Project plans are "live" as timesheets are posted, the ETC is adjusted and you see actuals posted automatically. The auto schedule function is quick and tools show impacts quickly. Linking several projects together for a set of resources is quick and flexible for portfolio scheduling and viewing. Easy to use settings for scheduling across resources, tasks, projects, and programs. Easy to create what-if scenarios and add or remove from a Project Portfolio or Program. Good at not letting you make logic errors in task settings.

Gives priority to tasks that have started even if there are other tasks with higher priority assigned.

Need a technically inclined person to manage/run it. User needs detailed skills and understanding in setting up project plan dependencies, priorities, resource loading patterns, and basic work breakdown structures.

CA ClarityPPM provides the tools to schedule projects and portfolios (programs) with complete confidence in making commitments on expected completion dates. Optimizing resources and coordinating with outside stakeholders due to reliability in forecasting.

What I like best about CA PPM is the holistic solution provided by the wide range of modules (projects, resources, ideas, etc.), and features (workflow, portlets, navigation) included with the application in a single installation. The logical arrangement of what is captured simplifies the entry, management, and accessibility of key information. CA PPM is ultimately flexible, and can scale from the smallest to largest needs (both volumes of information and configuration). The total package provides a one-stop-shop for several PPM needs.

The primary dislike of CA PPM has been the challenge to provide flexible reporting options that a typical end-user can personalize (ad hoc reporting). Until now, most reporting has required technical and/or administrative support when something new is requested. This issue is quickly on track to be resolved by the integration of Jaspersoft reporting solution, which will enable end-user reporting without the need for administrative or technical support.

Consider the consolidated features available in CA PPM, and the flexibility to make the solution fit the needs of the organization. Most PPM tools require the organization compromise on too many needs, because the tool will not offer enough flexibility, or the cost to develop the solution (in one form or another) is prohibitive.

The business problems being solved by CA PPM are: the lack of visibility into a wide range of PMO related activities; decentralized information management; lack of standardization in processes; and no governance or oversight. Before deploying CA PPM, projects, financials, and resources are all managed separately on different systems with no connection other than going through intensive efforts of manually pulling reports and massaging the data to reflect organizational reality...if that's even possible. Each of the problems identified have an associated cost, and therefore the cumulative aspect of all the problems identified is a high cost of doing business.

The benefits realized are many. CA PPM has become the centralized enterprise tool for establishing and enforcing PMO standards. Projects managed are visible to leadership for oversight and governance at any time by reviewing simple views and reports. Project Managers are connected with Resource Managers to negotiate use of resources. Key project financials are tracked to manage costs associated with various investments. Strategic planning is enabled by understanding the portfolio of investments requested, and available resources available or lacking. The organization saves significant costs by reduction of disparate tools, increased efficiency in operations, streamlined use of resources, and an accuracy and completeness of information to make better strategic decisions.

Clarity PPM provides a very powerful and configurable set of tools for Enterprise Portfolio Management. The out-of-the-box functionality is extensive, the dashboards are great, and it's relatively easy for admins to configure the UI for different roles. We even managed to get an integration working with Sharepoint, where Clarity program dashboards are updated based on the approval status of documents and stage-gates which are managed through Sharepoint workflows. Much easier to implement and maintain than using Clarity workflows. The capacity planning functionality is very effective. Upgrades are pretty seamless so far.

It's less useful for managing the detail of projects. For project plans, the native Clarity UI is cumbersome, and the integration with MSP is clunky. Project managers end up maintaining separate risk and issue logs, and only using Clarity for ad hoc reporting of highlights. No real support for Agile projects - we needed to layer a pseudo waterfall on top; it'll be interesting to see what impact CA's acquisition of Rally has on this aspect of the product. To use the capacity planning functionality for ongoing resource management during the full delivery lifecycle, you also need to use Clarity for timesheeting - if this requires migration from an existing solution, count on significant resistance and a lengthy adoption timeframe. Be sure to exercise as much due diligence in the choice of implementation partner as in the choice of platform - not everyone (even some of CA's own consultants) fully understands the platform. We have experienced significant downtime and performance issues using an on-premise solution; it took a considerable amount of work from CA consultants to get it back to an acceptable level.

Shop around. For a large-scale Clarity implementation, expect about 2 years of teething troubles before you start to see real business benefit unless your business environment is already very mature - in which case you may not actually need it.

Before we implemented Clarity, we had far too many projects being approved during the annual budget round, and entering the detailed assessment stage without proper business case validation or high-level capacity planning. With Clarity, we have a single source of truth, with the benefit that it is less easy for business leads and department heads to delay making key prioritization decisions, and the quantitative impact of delaying those decisions is clearer. Clarity has enabled more streamlined portfolio management and delivery status tracking for 500+ projects annually with an investment value of over 100M euros.

CA PPM can be configured flexibly,

can manage the enterprise portfolio,

integration is easy

Interface is old style and user driven customization is not fully supported by CA

Today one of the best PPM product

Manage Demand and Project Management.

Time sheet

CA PPM provides a full suite of functions that answers well to the management of IT investments i.e. projects, assets, applications, services etc...

Sometimes we experienced small changes in the application without truly understanding how they were made. Would like to have the ability to audit all configuration/changes.

Translation is not always working well and on the first time as expected.

CA PPM is very robust, it can do a lot for your organization, however the organization needs to be ready with it's processes and culture to use such a explicit and robust application efficiently.

Invest in the development of your internal administrators, they will be able to support the tool developments well without always relying on 3rd party vendor.

Benefits we are realizing are the ability to monitor and manage project performance.

It makes sure you can track your budget and risks and accomplish your project goals.

It is quite clunky, I feel like it isn't user intuitive and user friendly. It is hard getting user adoption.

n/A

Tracking risks and managing all acquisition risks and issues. Pulling data and reports and adding data allows us to better manage the projects.

Best tool to do demand management, cost management and project management. A robust tool available in the market.

Reporting system jaspersoft can be improved

This is the best project management tool available in the market. So I would strongly recommend to consider using CA PPM as a primary tool to do project management.

Project Management is easier

Does a lot of things very well 'if configured and used properly'.

The extent of configuration allowed on a standard install is extensive and can lead to a slippery slope of over customization and complexity. This is not a necessarily a flaw with the product itself, but I have seen too many instances of noisy, unmanageable installations because the Client has tried to satisfy every 'business need' under the sun.

Sure beats Planview!

I have solved many with CA PPM at various organizations, but true value has always been realized when the data reflects one of the following:

a) Money - are the portfolios/projects in alignment with projected spend , how much am I spending per initiative (with the ability to drill down to the lowest components)

b) Time - Schedule planning and schedule tracking (actual vs. planned)

c) Effort - Hours worked on a given component (project, task, issue etc)

Everything else is a nice to have and not nearly as exciting.

CA PPM (formerly known as CA Clarity) excels in helping businesses manage both the trees and the forests of their work. This facilitates both top-down and bottoms-up planning. Project Management, Resource Management, and Financial Management functionality lets project managers manage the details. Portfolio Management lets leaders understand priorities and make trade-off decisions. Having worked with PPM solutions for over 15 years, I have yet to see a better overall offering that tackles both ends of the problem.

The Saas offering is especially enticing because of the low overhead associated with maintenance and updates.

Like any disciplined approach, if you want good data out, you must put good data in. The requires rigor on the part of the organization to be willing to surface ALL the work and then to feed the data associated with that work into the system. There are simple ways to do this, but managers need to ensure that the right data is coming in so that the roll-ups are accurate. Some organizations aren't willing to pay that price and probably shouldn't be investing in PPM anyway.

I've experienced CA PPM both from the outside as a customer and from the inside (as a former CA employee). I've always loved the product. It is well-conceived and well-delivered. Hats off to the CA team for continuing to deliver an excellent solution.

Portfolio Management. Greater visibility and clarity of vision for the organization.

Easy to ask for time and remove task from time sheet

Very time consuming. We were told an update was coming and have yet to see it.

Hard to navigate and too many task to manage. Working with our company to structure better.

Currently more detailed then last system we used

It's the best allocation tool that I have used, it makes it very easy for me to track time spent on all the projects I participate in, and bill accordingly. Before using clarity, we used to manually have to enter what allocations we had for the projects we took part in. After clarity, allocating and billing our project time takes 10 minutes and we do it once a week.

Before Clarity was upgraded in our system, it was a bit clunky and confusing. After the upgrade, Clarity is easier than ever and all the tasks I can bill to in my PPM are easy to find and even easier to allocate.

Please make sure you read the user guide first so you can take advantage of all the out of the box capabilities that Clarity PPM offers.

Our organization needed a way to keep track of all the project work that we do, and we needed to find a way to bill to our system using allocations, Clarity was the best solution and it continues to be so.

For the moment - not a lot. Afer many years of stuggeling, it seems as if we will be able to use at as we should

Poor support from the vendor in Norway. Nobody there to gibe us good advice, and due to this our configutarion is poor.

We ar trying to keep Earned value tracking of all Projects in our Portfolio, and have a correct Portfolio overview. No benefits at all have been realized - but we have spent a fortune on the system

We used clarity for years and as we grew, re-org, etc, customization made it very clunky. We did a huge production reinstall, installing the vanilla version. Worked a while, then got big and clunky again.

We used clarity for years and as we grew, re-org, etc, customization made it very clunky. We did a huge production reinstall, installing the vanilla version. Worked a while, then got big and clunky again.

Budget and project tracking

There is notjhing that I like about this software.

User interface

calculations are invalid

report generation is slow

lack of customization

delayed completion of processes (update from investment team etc)

Allocation of employee resources and forecasting budgets across various IT projects.

I like that there is a one-stop dashboard. Having everything in one place is great.

The layout itself is kind of cumbersome and not really aesthetically pleasing. It's a bit dated looking.

It does its job well, and it is very easy to make timecard corrections, something that's very important.

It helps me keep track of my billed hours, easy to track my time off as well as really easy to make corrections.

Quick to use but houses great information for who is assigned to projects.

Isn’t the easiest on pulling data that’s needed, like allocations. Takes several steps.

Logging time and seeing project information.

Being on the cloud helps being able to store lots of large documents

I would like more customization available. For example there is only room for one approved for risks issues and changes- it should expand to how many people need especially if a change control board is approving

Using gantry charts, work breakdown structure and being able to integrate mpp, the financial app

Non-code based customization options to be able to expand the tool as we see additional opportunities

Clunky, out of date, other tools are faster and better managed with newer agile features and faster development with faster implementation of new features.

We use it for Project & Portfolio Management, Financial Management and Resource Management. We selected it because it does all of those in a single tool and offers some customization.

It is easy to use, included industry best practices.

CA frequently coming with new releases without allowing time to stable existing version.

Yes, I will recommend to others.

Good for resource planning.

Pretty good task allocation interface. Keeps everyone up to date and organized.

A lot of other products like this have customization, big downfall.

Might consider something with customization. Not bad software but I do believe there is better.

Using for agile porject management, doing the job.

Best option for Project Portfolio Management

Nothing specific. It is working in almost all scenarios

System for Single truth for all Portfolio Management activities.

Good task allocation with visualization.

Not wonderful with issue tracking and doesn't offer much customization.

Not bad software but honestly there are better options for project management.

Use mostly for task allocation, very efficient.

Time sheet Module, Project Portfolio & AOP tracking

User interface should be bit more upto date

NA

Portfolio management

Clarity is good for putting all information in the same place so anyone in the company can access.

It’s not the best tool for budgeting and controlling the schedule.

I have managed from small to big projects with CA PPM. The tool is easy to be acessed.

By using Workbench, we have a true resource effort capacity planning capability.

Allocate from Estimates only works once.

Demand for services far exceeds our capacity to deliver. We now have a true way to manage demand to capacity and schedule work and better manage expectations.

Much more than MS Project. It is for serious business that need collaboration and cross-departamental PM (doesn't everybody fall into this category?)

It's expensive, and implementation can be long if you don't manage your customizations. If you want to have quicker ROI, just use the base product for a year or two, and adapt your processes to what Clarity offers out of the box.

Stick with the basics, avoid customizations

Cross-departamental collaboration and project management, integrated with familiar tools for PMs (MS Project) but enabling non-PMs to use a web version for Idea generation, tracking and reporting.

Very useful to manage multiple releases. Helps keep track of all the aspects of the release cycle.

No support for cross functional implementations. It is not very intuitive to determine the different cycles.

Useful tool but with limitations.

The most important use is to break down the tasks into multiple orders and tracking them to completion.

I like how easy it is to define roles and associate them with resources. The reporting of resource allocation is great!

Insane cost to upgrade the product when that time comes.

Better resource and demand management.

Simple for normal users, comfortable for Administrators and Business users.

I miss a standard user administration where you quick check who has which user right, goup etc. without checking every single user.

Project Portfolio Management, resource management

It's very user friendly and easy to learn.

There are not enough custom reports included.

We were able to get the entire organization involved in resource management.

There’s so much on PPM that it is al over the place and more confusing

Too many resources and not enough training

Professional development

Usability of the system, it's very intuitive and user friendly.

No major dislikes of the PPM system. Simple system that works well for its intended use.

Makes it easy to track the team's time.