Broadcom Clarity vs Planview: Comparing enterprise PPM solutions

The global PPM software market hit $7.8 billion in 2024, per IDC data, with a growth rate of 11.5%.

For PMOs, the shortlist typically includes two names: Broadcom Clarity and Planview. Both were built for large organizations with complex governance needs. However, both come with trade-offs, which tend to surface as teams push for faster planning cycles and more agile delivery.

Here's how they compare, where each tends to struggle, and why some PMOs are looking elsewhere.

What is Planview?

Planview is a portfolio management platform designed for structured governance and centralized control across large organizations. Gartner named it a Leader in the 2024 Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management.

Executive teams use it to manage portfolios across business units and connect multi-year investments to strategic priorities. Planview's architecture is top-down by design – built to help leadership see how projects and funding map to enterprise architecture and long-range plans.

If your organization relies on formal governance models or needs to rationalize investments across dozens of programs simultaneously, that is what Planview was built for.

What is Broadcom Clarity?

Broadcom Clarity approaches portfolio management from a finance-first perspective.

Like Planview, it handles enterprise-wide portfolio oversight – but financial control is where it goes deeper. PMOs use it to track multi-currency portfolios and manage funding approval workflows, with audit trails built to satisfy regulators.

That rigor is why Clarity is common in banking, healthcare, and government. If your organization needs traceability from project request through delivery – with CapEx/OpEx tracking and approval chains built in – Clarity was designed for that.

Pros and cons: Planview vs Clarity PPM vs Tempo

Planview and Clarity are both capable enterprise platforms. Tempo Software takes a different approach with a modular SPM platform built for Jira.

Here's what each does well and where users push back.

Planview

Pros

• Named a Leader in Gartner's 2024 Strategic Portfolio Management Magic Quadrant and Forrester's 2024 SPM Wave

• Centralized visibility across global portfolios and business units

• Covers enterprise architecture, strategic alignment, and top-down portfolio governance

Cons

• Many users describe the interface as outdated, according to G2 review data – navigation is a recurring complaint

• Reporting often requires specialist configuration support before it delivers useful results

• Organizations frequently find they need multiple Planview products to cover their actual requirements, which drives total cost well above initial license estimates

• Performance can degrade when working with very large datasets

Broadcom Clarity

Pros

• Deep financial governance with multi-currency budget tracking and approval workflows

• Enterprise scorecards for regulatory compliance tracking across the project lifecycle

• End-to-end audit trail from project request through delivery

Cons

• The user interface is consistently described as outdated and non-intuitive in independent reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and PeerSpot

• A steep learning curve for non-financial users – a common obstacle in broader organizational adoption

• Routine updates often require several extra navigation steps

Tempo

Pros

• Native Jira integration means portfolio insights reflect real execution data automatically – no manual data syncing

• Supports agile, hybrid, and traditional delivery methodologies natively, with minimal change management for teams already using Jira

• AI-powered capabilities including Rovo Agents for querying work and portfolio data

• A modern interface that drives adoption across PMO, delivery, and finance teams

• Modular implementation: Start with time tracking or capacity planning, then expand into financial tracking or portfolio management

Cons

• Modular approach means essentially paying to add features that would be bundled into tools like Planview and Clarity; Tempo apps have separate configuration and maintenance

• Using Tempo's modular Jira SPM suite means taking a bottom-up view – which makes it tricky for executives to model complex what-if scenarios for a 5-year capital investment plan that hasn't been built out in Jira

High-level comparison

Summary

Planview is a recognized enterprise PPM leader with broad portfolio visibility and governance depth. Implementations are complex, and performance at scale can degrade with very large datasets. "Project Sentiment" dashboards have modernized the UI. Anvi, a recently released conversational AI interface, allows users to bypass complex menus and ask questions like, "Show me which projects are overallocated in Q3."

Broadcom Clarity delivers strong financial governance and compliance-grade auditing, but requires significant training and a longer rollout. With the release of its "Modern UX" and Clarity Concierge AI assistant, Clarity has made strides in modernizing the platform and mobile app experience.

Tempo Software integrates directly with Jira, so teams get portfolio insights from the tools they already use. It supports agile, hybrid, and traditional methodologies, and implementation is measured in weeks, not months. Tempo's unified navigation bar helps companies move between app type: entry-hyperlink id: 4VydlUTntdva3pHflPkMvg with ease. The company has also rolled out seven Rovo AI agents that use a conversational interface to build dashboards, analyze sprints, create custom formulas and more.

Feature-by-feature comparison

1. Resource allocation and capacity planning

Managing resource capacity is a core PMO responsibility, and both platforms handle it at enterprise scale. Planview includes scenario modeling tools to show how resource changes affect delivery timelines. Clarity ties allocation reporting directly to financial initiatives.

There's a catch. Both tools typically need significant configuration work before capacity data becomes reliable. Organizations need to define roles, availability assumptions, and capacity models before forecasts mean anything. And if execution data lives somewhere else – like Jira – there's yet another manual sync to manage.

Gartner puts only 16% of organizations in the "effective" category for resource and capacity planning. Both tools can do the job. Neither is configured to do it out of the box.

2. Budgeting and financial control

Clarity is finance-first by design. It handles CapEx/OpEx tracking and multi-currency chargebacks with a level of detail most project tools don't get near. For PMOs in regulated industries, that precision is often the deciding factor.

Planview takes a more strategic view. It connects funding to investment themes and strategic initiatives – good for executive decision-making, but less granular than Clarity for line-item auditing or complex financial workflows.

3. User experience and implementation

User experience is the most consistent criticism of both platforms, and it shows up in reviews everywhere – G2, Gartner Peer Insights, PeerSpot.

Because these tools were built around executive reporting and financial oversight, the same split tends to happen: engineers stay in Jira, PMs retreat to spreadsheets, and only the PMO is actually inside the PPM tool. One TrustRadius reviewer called Planview "over-engineered to the point of un-useful." The daily experience for people who aren't portfolio analysts tends to confirm it.

Implementation compounds this. Planview enterprise deployments typically run 6 to 12 months – and Gartner is direct about what that means: "Prospective customers should not assume a Planview Portfolios implementation is similar to a software installation with a one-time rollout and a definitive end." Clarity tends to take 9 to 12 months, sometimes longer for global organizations. Both require dedicated IT resources and outside consultants before teams see meaningful value.

Finding implementation support is only going to get harder – A 2024 Project Management Institute report projects a shortage of 22 million skilled PPM workers by 2027.

The alternative: How Tempo offers modern enterprise power

If your organization needs enterprise-level portfolio visibility without a 9-month rollout, Tempo offers a different path – and it's built specifically around the fragmentation problem that legacy tools create.

Tempo's portfolio management suite is built natively for Jira. Time logs from Timesheets, resource data from Capacity Planner, and financial tracking from Financial Manager all flow automatically into portfolio views. No second system to update.

When portfolio data comes from the same place teams do their actual work, it's more current and more trusted. There's less "is this number accurate?" in the boardroom. Fewer stale reports landing in the wrong inbox.

Structure PPM extends that visibility across complex programs and cross-team work. Custom Charts surfaces dashboards directly in Jira or Confluence – no exports, no separate logins.

Tempo's Rovo Agents let teams query work and portfolio data conversationally – the kind of AI-assisted planning that both Planview and Clarity are still building toward.

The modular approach means you don't have to commit to a year-long rollout up front. Many organizations start with Timesheets or Capacity Planner and expand into Financial Manager or Structure PPM as their needs grow. That path typically unfolds over weeks, not quarters. Tempo serves more than 30,000 customers globally, including one in three Fortune 500 companies – most of them running enterprise-scale delivery from inside Jira.

For a detailed comparison, see our guides on Tempo vs Planview and Tempo vs Broadcom Clarity.

To explore what this looks like for your PMO, explore the Portfolio Management platform.

Which tool is right for you?

The right platform depends on how your organization governs work and what portfolio visibility actually needs to do day to day.

Final verdict: Planview vs Clarity

Planview and Clarity have been in this market long enough to earn their place on enterprise shortlists. For large organizations with complex governance requirements, the capability is genuine.

Planview is the stronger choice when strategic alignment and centralized portfolio oversight are the primary mandate. Broadcom Clarity tends to win when financial auditing and regulatory compliance drive the selection decision.

That capability comes at a cost. Long implementations and steep learning curves add months of IT time and consultant fees on top of license costs. For many PMOs, adoption is the harder problem.

Tempo works for teams that need enterprise portfolio visibility without buying into a year-long deployment. If deep financial auditing and multi-currency chargebacks are the top priority, Clarity is hard to beat. But for PMOs that need faster decisions and broader team adoption – with portfolio insights that reflect what's actually happening in delivery – Tempo is worth evaluating.

Gartner research shows organizations that invest in effective portfolio management are twice as likely to outperform their competitors. That advantage only shows up if teams actually use the tool.

Explore Tempo's portfolio management solution to see it in action.

Book a demo and talk through how it fits your team's planning environment.