ServiceNow for Architects and Project Leaders: A complete guide to driving innovation, creating value, and making an impact with ServiceNow

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

ServiceNow for Architects and Project Leaders

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This book is possible thanks to Estella, Varisha, Allie, and our parents, whose support and understanding made this book possible, and thanks to all the team members, clients, and ServiceNow community members we’ve learned from along the way.

We dedicate this effort to those of you who are just starting your journey with ServiceNow so that you might walk an easier path than we did.

– Roy and David

Contributors

About the authors

Roy Justus has spent the last decade of his professional career helping to bring the potential of ServiceNow to life at scale. Within the ServiceNow ecosystem, he has been both a customer and a leader of consulting teams across a wide array of industries.

A lifelong learner, Roy holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary and is a ServiceNow Certified Master Architect. His current area of focus is on bringing the value of modern artificial intelligence to the ServiceNow ecosystem, both through the deployment of ServiceNow’s AI features and the integration of external deep learning models.

David Zhao is a ServiceNow Certified Master Architect and has been obsessed with helping organizations bring business transformation to life through ServiceNow for nearly a decade. He has led complex transformations across a wide variety of industries, including energy and resources, telecom, financial services, and tech, across multiple continents and hemispheres.

Before getting involved in the ServiceNow world, David was once a web application developer and holds a master’s degree in applied science from the University of Victoria with a focus on computer security research using statistical and AI models. He currently leads a team that focuses on advising organizations on the changes they must make to break through the automation wall that prevents them from taking full advantage of transformational technologies, such as ServiceNow’s AI capabilities.

About the reviewer

Anubhav Kapoor has worked in the IT space for more than 13 years, with over 5 years dedicated explicitly to the ServiceNow platform. He has been an administrator, developer, and consultant and now works as an expert consultant on platform implementation and integration. He received his engineering degree from Dr. M.G.R. Educational and Research Institute in India. He is an active member and contributor to the ServiceNow community. When he is not at work, he is on a vacation with his family or blogging. He lives with his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters in New Jersey, USA.

My completion of this project could not have been accomplished without the support of my loving wife, Priyanka: my deepest gratitude. For taking care of the kids while their father completed his work, I could never be more thankful. Heartfelt thanks to my ServiceNow community members and experts for constantly putting in the best each day.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1 – Pursuit of Value

1

Understanding the Value of ServiceNow

Managing for value4

What is value?4

Why is managing ServiceNow’s value important?4

Who is responsible for value?4

How do we define value?5

Types of value6

Service quality6

Defining a service scope6

Service quality metrics7

Planning for service quality8

Identifying opportunities in the current state8

Aligning the implementation scope with the opportunity9

Cost optimization9

Process efficiency10

Process efficiency metrics13

Asset optimization14

Customer experience17

Tools for customer experience 18

Scoping customer experience value – portals18

Scoping customer experience value – Virtual Agent18

Measuring customer experience 19

Innovation enablement19

Ideation 19

Project management 20

Summary21

2

Recognizing and Avoiding Value Traps

Replicating the current state24

The tool replacement approach24

Arguments in favor of replicating the current state24

Issues with replicating the current state25

Strategy 1 – Adopting the out-of-the-box process26

Strategy 2 – Developing an MVP process26

Ignoring the current state27

Focusing on the future27

Failing to learn from the past28

Strategy 1 – Process shadowing29

Tips for conducting process shadowing30

The time investment of process shadowing30

The expected benefits of process shadowing31

Strategy 2 – Data analysis31

Targeting data analysis31

Conducting exploratory analysis32

Integrating value and analysis32

The importance of intentional time allocation33

Chasing the long tail34

The appeal of aiming for 100% coverage34

The distribution of value34

Risks of completeness35

Strategy 1 – Top N selection35

The recommended approach for ranking36

Strategy 2 – Minimal implementation for long-tail items36

Not managing change37

The first cut – OCM37

Risks of reducing the OCM effort37

Optimizing value from OCM38

Responding to insufficient management of change38

Applying high-impact OCM activities39

Target state work instructions39

Transition support service40

The science experiment40

Projects extending ServiceNow40

Risks of the science experiment42

Recognizing a science experiment42

Handling a science experiment43

Summary43

3

Capturing Value from your Implementation

Lowering the process cycle time45

Causes of long cycle times46

Confusion in how and where to engage a process46

How to measure process cycle times and see your issues47

Delays in response to requests for service47

Inability to find the right expertise to fulfil the request47

Lost updates and poor transitions between service fulfillment parties48

How your ServiceNow transformation can reduce process cycle times49

How to prepare for an implementation with a focus on reducing the cycle time50

Optimizing asset utilization51

Causes of poor asset utilization52

How your ServiceNow transformation can improve asset utilization53

How to prepare for an implementation with a focus on optimizing asset utilization56

Automating toil60

Sources of toil60

Where ServiceNow can automate toil62

How to prepare for an implementation with a focus on automating toil64

Improving customer experience66

Where customer experience can improve66

Where ServiceNow can help improve customer experience68

How to prepare for an implementation to improve customer experience70

Summary71

4

Planning an Implementation Program for Success

Defining the scope of the project74

Important components of the project scope74

Adding details to the scope77

Planning the release and release activities79

Releasing often (minimizing impacts)79

Considering external dependencies80

Planning for data migration and validation81

Considering testing and training84

Structuring the implementation team86

Examining major project functions87

Examining team leads and their skill sets88

Can’t I just hire a consultant for all this?91

Governance92

Accelerating decision-making with a good governance model92

Reducing the overhead of governance94

Value management96

Summary97

Part 2 – The Checklist

5

Securing Your ServiceNow Instances

The case for investment in security101

What is at risk?102

Securing leadership support for security103

Planning for instance hardening104

Implementation security measures104

Planning for secure platform operations105

Improving instance security posture105

Instance Security Center105

Encryption107

How to approach encryption108

Encryption types108

Integration security110

Source and target system security110

Securing endpoints110

Authentication and service accounts in ServiceNow111

Role of the ServiceNow MID Server112

Summary113

6

Managing Multiple ServiceNow Instances

What are ServiceNow instances?115

Instance administration operations116

zBoot – a full reset of your instance117

System clone – copying the configuration and data from another instance119

Code promotion and data flow122

Designing your ServiceNow landscape124

Summary126

7

Designing Effective Processes at Scale

ServiceNow’s process automation capabilities and archetypes127

Technical components of the platform that deal with event intake or user input129

Technical components of the platform that manage workflows131

Technical components of the platform that deal with tasking and the execution of automated actions134

Technical components of the platform that deal with shared and foundational data135

Designing process automation by utilizing platform building blocks and data137

Creating repeatable and reusable patterns to ease implementation complexity140

Summary143

8

Platform Team Processes, Standards, and Techniques

Platform management and technical standards146

Setting standards to manage platform maintenance and risk146

Standards and tips to manage platform changes148

Operational processes and techniques of technical development155

Teams should manage the accuracy of their estimations and the consistency of their throughput155

Teams should use version control whenever possible and use it as a way of managing code review and quality control processes158

Summary160

Part 3 – From Success to Innovation

9

Effectively Operating ServiceNow

The differences between operations and project work164

Establishing a platform strategy 165

Who will be the platform’s customers?165

How will the platform fit within the broader technology landscape?167

Establishing a platform operating model 168

Platform operating model roles169

Who will manage the direction of the platform and how? 172

Who will manage the intake of platform demands and how?173

Who will manage how changes are implemented on the platform and how?174

Who will manage the funding of changes on the platform and how?176

Operating the platform 178

Executive sponsor and operating committee 178

Platform owner179

Business analyst/product owner181

Demand managers183

Platform architect183

Summary184

10

Artificial Intelligence in ServiceNow

Understanding AI and ML 186

What is AI? 186

The AI/ML capabilities of the ServiceNow platform190

Predictive intelligence 190

Practical example – automating an incident routing rule190

Classification framework193

Assessing the applicability of the classification framework 193

Getting started with the classification framework 194

Regression framework198

Metrics for regression198

Input data quality199

Improving data quality200

Similarity framework200

Assessing the similarity framework’s performance201

Clustering framework202

Creating a clustering solution202

Summary203

11

Designing Exceptional Experiences

Types of ServiceNow user interfaces 205

Jelly 206

Service Portal206

Next Experience206

Portals207

Types of portals207

The journey from department to enterprise portals207

Employee Center Pro208

Content taxonomy209

Custom app portals and portal customizations209

Application portals211

Workspaces 212

Determining which workspaces to use213

Optimizing experiences with user-facing AI214

AI Search214

AI Search configurability214

Conversational interfaces215

Incorporating Virtual Agent into your user experience215

Advantages of Virtual Agent as a user interface215

Disadvantages of conversational interfaces215

Recommendations for Virtual Agent216

ServiceNow NLU216

Summary217

Index

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Preface

The work of a ServiceNow architect, project leader, or consultant is made meaningful by the impact it has on those who work with us and the users who ultimately benefit from our solutions. In creating this book, we hope to make the work of your teams more fulfilling and ultimately help you deliver on the promise of ServiceNow: to make the world of work, work better for people.

In this book, we share the approaches and perspectives that we’ve assembled over the last decade of our engagement in the ServiceNow ecosystem. We have tried to author the book we wish was available to us when we started our first project in the hope that it will make things easier, more efficient, and more effective for our readers and their teams.

This book will not replace the value of experience, but it will give you a head start and hopefully magnify your own ability to make a difference for those who are relying on your work. Thoughtful application of the tools and principles in this book will be rewarded as you deliver more impactful projects with fewer surprises.

Who this book is for

This book is targeted at architects, consultants, and project leaders looking to drive value by applying ServiceNow effectively and efficiently. Platform administration or development experience is useful but not required to get value from the book – however, some familiarity with the modules and features of ServiceNow is expected.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Understanding the Value of ServiceNow, sets the stage by explaining why it is that we embark on ServiceNow projects in the first place. We will provide you with the necessary tools to frame the value proposition of your own project in consistent terms and make goals concrete enough to steer your actions.

Chapter 2, Recognizing and Avoiding Value Traps, outlines the common pitfalls that can put the value of your project at risk. We will explain why so many projects are affected by these traps and how to avoid them, as well as alternatives that help you stay out of trouble.

Chapter 3, Capturing Value from Your Implementation, will go over the multitude of ways that ServiceNow can add value to your organization, which will help you better identify and link opportunities together into strong business cases and set up the beneficiaries for success.

Chapter 4, Planning an Implementation Program for Success, provides you with a list of considerations and recommendations in case you are considering the implementation of ServiceNow in your organization, which can improve your value realization and the impact of your success.

Chapter 5, Securing Your ServiceNow Instances, is about making sure that your ServiceNow instance is protected from malicious actors. While anyone keeping up with industry news knows that cybersecurity breaches are increasingly impactful, there are steps you can take to make your instances less of a target.

Chapter 6, Managing Multiple ServiceNow Instances, intends to provide someone who is leading their first project with actionable guidelines on how to set up their ServiceNow instances, which will avoid them getting into trouble with releases.

Chapter 7, Designing Effective Processes at Scale, covers the capability of the ServiceNow platform to automate processes and how to connect the pieces to solve your automation problems and encourage configuration reuse.

Chapter 8, Platform Team Processes, Standards, and Techniques, provides an overview of some of the standards and norms a ServiceNow development team should establish in order to deliver value quickly and at a high quality.

Chapter 9, Effectively Operating ServiceNow, provides a lot of value if you are a ServiceNow platform owner. This chapter gives you a look at who you need on your team and which parts of the organization you should engage and provides other recommendations on making that team an effective business value enabler.

Chapter 10, Artificial Intelligence in ServiceNow, intends to provide coverage of one of the most important parts of the ServiceNow platform – the artificial intelligence features that can enable a reality of automation that many aspire to but few can deliver.

Chapter 11, Designing Exceptional Experiences, which is also the final chapter, is all about the ServiceNow user interface, explaining the recent changes to the platform, as well as making sense of the array of options that exist on it.

To get the most out of this book

This book is intended to provide value for practitioners at any stage of their ServiceNow journey but has been specifically written to be accessible for those starting their first ServiceNow project. While those with prior ServiceNow experience might be able to jump right into the chapters that seem most interesting, we recommend starting with Part 1 as you frame your plan and business case for ServiceNow, picking up with Part 2 before kicking off the technical configuration, and turning to Part 3 before go-live or when you feel the topics might apply to you.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/qD8rj.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: To facilitate this distinction, it is often useful to name service accounts with a common prefix, such as svc-.

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: The zBoot option can be found on the second page of the Instance Management category, which can be accessed from the left-hand menu in All automations | Service catalog | Instance Management.

Tips or important notes

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Part 1 – Pursuit of Value

ServiceNow implementations, as with most worthwhile endeavors, are costly and difficult; if not for the substantial value they unlock, few companies would undertake them. This section discusses the strategy and tactics of using your ServiceNow implementation as a tool to drive business value.

This part of the book comprises the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Understanding the Value of ServiceNow

Chapter 2, Recognizing and Avoiding Value Traps

Chapter 3, Capturing Value from Your Implementation

Chapter 4, Planning an Implementation Program for Success

1

Understanding the Value of ServiceNow

We will start this book by discussing the value that can be enabled by the deployment of ServiceNow. All too often, the ServiceNow platform (and other tools) is deployed to fill a particular role within the technology landscape without focusing on the value it generates for the organization. When an organization sets out to implement a ticketing tool or an HR portal, it can be an indication that they’re on this path. If you’re reading this book, you have likely been given a key role in bringing ServiceNow to an organization and you would like to help make that implementation as valuable as possible. This book is going to give you concrete and actionable advice on how to achieve that goal.

This chapter will provide specific guidance on how to discover and shape the value proposition of your organization’s investment in ServiceNow.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics related to Managing Value:

What is Value?

Why is managing ServiceNow’s value important?

Who is responsible for value?

How do we define value?

Then, we will dive deeper into four categories of ServiceNow implementation value:

Service quality

Cost optimization

Customer experience

Innovation enablement

Managing for value

When setting out on an implementation, your chances of realizing value will be much higher if you actively manage specific value outcomes. This section will provide an overview of value and its management in the context of a ServiceNow implementation so that you can clearly define the value expected in your own implementation.

What is value?

To achieve value, it is first necessary to understand what it is. Simply put, value is the benefit that your organization receives from some activity or investment. The value of a financial investment includes the price you receive when you sell it and the value of a piece of fine art includes the pleasure of owning and displaying it. Similarly, the value of ServiceNow includes all the benefits that result from its implementation. Value can be financial or non-financial, and it can accrue to yourself, your customers, or your shareholders. It is also sometimes referred to as the return on investment (ROI), benefits, or positive outcomes – in all cases, value is the desirable result of an investment of resources in the execution of some activity.

Why is managing ServiceNow’s value important?

This book is predicated on the assumption that the leaders who sponsor and commission implementation projects such as a ServiceNow deployment are doing it because they wish to reap measurable benefits from the outcomes of that implementation. While some small minority of projects may be commissioned for other reasons (that is, political maneuvering), it’s much more likely that someone is investing and hoping to see tangible benefits.

The value of ServiceNow must be clearly understood at the outset of a project to ensure it will be realized. If the planned benefits are not realized, then the implementation will have failed even if there is a go-live where cake is served (it is a tradition in the ServiceNow community that each major go-live is celebrated with a branded cake). While some would hope that simply introducing ServiceNow immediately provides you with a vast array of benefits, it is the careful and considered application of that tool to your company’s business processes that will help you achieve the objectives. Actively managing the value of your implementation will result in a higher ROI, which, depending on your role, will translate to a more satisfied boss, customer, or stakeholder group.

Who is responsible for value?

The leader commissioning and sponsoring the ServiceNow project will ultimately be responsible for the ROI – for this reason, the final responsibility lies with the project sponsor. However, in many cases, this responsibility is delegated to a project leader who will chair the steering committee and serve as the person charged with the success of the project.

This project leader may delegate the responsibility for daily management of project work and outcomes further to a project manager. However, at the end of the day, a team will be charged to deliver the project’s outcomes and the daily work of implementing ServiceNow will fall on their shoulders. What is essential, regardless of the number of levels in your project’s governance structure, is that clear and continuous communication around value occurs from those doing the work to those responsible for the outcomes. The facilitation of this communication is the responsibility of the project leadership team and the project leader.

Alongside the primary responsibility of the project leader, there is the opportunity for every member of the team to take ownership of their contribution to the project’s value. This ownership includes identifying value opportunities, documenting value statements, aligning the project execution with the desired outcomes, and drawing attention to any risks to value realization. In this sense, if you are reading this book, it is likely that you are responsible for value in your role in ServiceNow implementation and that by focusing on bringing success to your implementation rather than the often-stated goal of going live, you can make an outsized impact on the benefits that will be achieved.

How do we define value?

Defining value is difficult and many projects get launched and even completed without this essential step – however, if the value is not defined, there is little chance of it being realized. A useful practice for defining value is the creation of value statements that can precisely anchor the discussion of value:

You should always describe the mechanism for value generation in your value statement so that it can be used to steer decision-making on your project.

You should always define a value statement regarding some group or organization – even a brick of gold is only valuable if someone can make use of it and gold ore deep below ground is only potentially valuable.

You should always strive to quantify value in a value statement, even if it’s a non-financial metric – otherwise, you may not be able to determine whether a particular element of value was realized. At the end of the day, if you can’t tell whether the value was achieved, then it probably wasn’t.

Here’s an example of a value statement - Automate widget request sourcing: The introduction of automation into the widget request process at the sourcing step reduces effort on the part of the widget manager by 15 minutes per request, with a cumulative annual savings of 460 hours, while reducing the time customers wait for their widgets by 1 day.

In almost all cases, value statements should be documented in a location that is accessible to your project teams, except for value statements relating to confidential activities such as unannounced organizational change or a material event such as an acquisition. By making the value statements available to your project team and referencing them throughout your project, you increase the probability of these benefits being realized. In projects being delivered by your own organization, your project charter or project business case may incorporate the value statements. In the case that a consulting or professional services organization is working on your implementation, the documentation on the project scope of the work can serve as a useful place to define these outcomes and to ensure alignment between all parties.

Types of value

While the value proposition of each project in each organization may be slightly different, years of implementing ServiceNow across diverse industries have shown that some common themes re-occur. Each of these provides a significant opportunity that should be explored in the context of your implementations, but it is most common for organizations to choose one or two as a primary focus of their projects. The four general themes are the following:

Service quality

Cost optimization

Customer experience

Innovation enablement

Each theme deserves independent treatment and the remainder of this chapter will be dedicated to describing these areas of value and the specific considerations that should be applied to the ones you target. In particular, we will review the important information needed to effectively drive value for each area to support you in determining which value opportunities you will target and what activities, features, or modules you will include in your scope to achieve those opportunities.

Service quality

Perhaps the most classic ServiceNow use case, the theme of service quality relates to an organization’s ability to deliver what they have committed to. The nature of services may vary but the underlying principles are quite similar and even the terminology used to manage them is often aligned. In an IT organization, service quality is the availability and smooth operation of the enterprise software and hardware, from laptops to Wi-Fi and from email to accounting systems. In a telecommunications company, service quality is about the stability and speed of communications services such as the internet and cable TV, while for an internet company, the availability of their website might be the primary consideration.

Defining a service scope

When striving toward service quality improvements, it is critical to define a service scope consisting of the