In the article "Accelerating Business Agility with Distributed Development", we discuss how distributing repetitive administration tasks can significantly enhance agility in your ServiceNow system. For organisations looking to empower their teams, distributing catalogue administration tasks is a good first step toward fostering citizen development.
Why Distributing Administration Tasks?
Distributing administration tasks involves delegating specific responsibilities to a broader group of users or teams within your organisation. Here are some key benefits:
- Enhanced Agility: By decentralising tasks, organisations can respond more quickly to changes and requests, reducing bottlenecks.
- Empowered Teams: Allowing different teams to manage their segments of the catalogue fosters ownership and innovation.
- Scalability: As catalogues grow, distributed management ensures that updates and expansions can be handled efficiently.
- Citizen Development: Encouraging non-IT staff to contribute can drive innovative solutions and better align the catalogue with business needs.
- Specialist Focus: By delegating routine administrative tasks, ServiceNow specialists can redirect their efforts towards high-impact activities. This not only improves the value of their expertise but also accelerates the organisation’s digital transformation journey.
A common question that arises is: WHERE DO WE START?
Step 1: Identify the Most Time-Consuming Recurring Tasks
Start by listing the recurring administration tasks that consume the most time. For example, creating and updating catalog items is often a time-heavy process. Once you've identified these tasks, filter out those requiring advanced ServiceNow skills, such as log and performance reviews.
Next, highlight tasks that can be performed using No-Code or Low-Code tools—such as catalog item administration or knowledge management. These tasks can be handed off to citizen developers with minimal training, freeing up technical resources for higher-priority tasks.
Step 2: Focus on a Specific Use Case first
Example: Catalog Item Creation and Updates
Why
The creation of catalog items and record producers is a great entry point for new ServiceNow developers. It's actually how I began my own ServiceNow journey back in 2007—building catalog items to onboard new ServiceNow employees...
Catalog item creation and updates are easy to control, and ServiceNow tools provide guardrails to ensure the work adheres to governance standards. This makes it a perfect starting point for empowering distributed developers.
Who
Define the "super contributors"—those business users who are familiar with IT tools (you know, the ones who are always bringing the cool Excel templates) and are enthusiastic about contributing to organisational agility. Start with a small number of candidates who are keen to learn and assist bringing the organization to the next level.
Onboarding Process
Onboarding these contributors should follow the same governance process as other ServiceNow activities: with the App Engine Management Center (AEMC), that will guide you through it as well as auditing the process.
Technically, onboarding a citizen developer is only about giving the right role to a user and listing the user in the app collaborators. The rest is governance.
Where
Start in a sandbox environment to let the citizen developers practice without affecting live data. If a sandbox isn’t available, they can use a Personal Developer Instance (PDI). Once confidence is built, move them to a development environment.
Tip: Create a multiple-choice test with 10 questions you want to make sure they understood before to enable them in DEV. If they pass, award them a badge that adds them to a ServiceNow group with the appropriate roles to become a citizen developer.
Before You Start: Build Supporting Templates
Create a suite of templates to make it easier for distributed developers to focus on content, not configuration. For example:
- Catalog Item Template: Predefine the item with the right scope, catalog, and category, rights and even a draft description with the model should follow to keep homogeneity between all items.
- Variable Sets: Provide common sets of questions, documented for easy reference by your distributed developers. Using variable sets will help ensure a consistent experience for users and simplify the development process.
- Scopes: Build granular scopes—think of them as containers where distributed developers will manage their catalog items. Granularity here makes future growth easier. Don’t use generic names like "Catalog" for scopes. Instead, use something specific, like "HR Payroll Catalog," to ensure clear organisation.
Step 3: Train Your Distributed Developers
Ensure your distributed developers are familiar with the tools they will be using. Start by teaching them about:
- Catalog Builder: A simple, guided experience for creating catalog items and record producers.
- App Engine Studio (AES): For managing the full lifecycle of your applications, including catalog item creation and updates.
- Decision tables: Enable developers to decouple decision logic to flows, easily created and maintained with no-code.
- Optional: Flow Designer: For building automated workflows and processes related to catalog items. While powerful and low-code, it's potentially step 2 for new distributed developers.
Training Resources: The ServiceNow Learning Center offers excellent, easy-to-follow training materials, such as the "ServiceNow Citizen Developer Core Skills." These resources are ideal for onboarding and empowering new developers.
Step 4: Catalog Creation and Updates for Citizen Developers
Now that Distributed developers have been trained, they will simply have to access the Catalog Builder via a provided link that will pre-apply the right template to create a new item. To create this link, Simply access the Catalog builder, click on "Create a new item", pick the right template, click on "Use this template": you can now save this URL to share it with the team. They will then only have to build the catalog item (or record producer) descriptions, questions and submit!
To update existing item, they simply have to access the App Engine Studio (AES), select the scope they want to modify and open the items from the "Experience" section to make changes through the Catalog Builder (fully embedded within AES).
Once completed, they simply submit the new item or update from the App Engine Studio.
Step 5: Assessment, Testing and Publication Governance
Once a catalog item is submitted, the submission will be then reviewed via standard governance processes directly in the App Engine Management Center (AEMC): the usual pipeline process will be triggered and follow the governance processes.
As a ServiceNow admin, you'll have full visibility over the work and ensure it meets your organisation's standards:
- Ensure compliance and consistency.
- Monitor performance metrics.
- Set up regular review to address issues and gather feedback.
To deep dive into the App Engine Studio and AEMC capabilities, I strongly recommend exploring this excellent article: App Engine Studio Welcome Guide.
Overcoming Common Challenges
While distributing catalogue administration tasks has many advantages, here are strategies to address potential obstacles:
- Providing Support: Establish a centralised place to assist the distributed developers and troubleshoot issues.
- Maintaining Consistency: Use standard templates to ensure uniformity.
- Avoiding Overlap: Clearly define ownership boundaries to prevent duplicates.
Real-World Example: Introducing Citizen Development at Scale
Consider an organisation where HR, IT, and Facilities teams each manage their catalogue items. By training team members on ServiceNow and giving them the necessary permissions, the organisation reduced its central ServiceNow workload while improving request fulfilment times. This approach also encouraged innovation, with teams introducing new service offerings tailored to their users’ needs at Lightspeed.
Conclusion
Distributing catalogue administration tasks is not merely about sharing the workload—it’s a strategic move to empower teams, enhance service delivery, and promote innovation. By implementing a structured approach and leveraging ServiceNow’s capabilities, organisations can transform their catalogue management into a dynamic, collaborative process that supports their broader goals.
Take the first step today and empower your organisation with distributed developers using ServiceNow’s powerful tools!
Want to know more?
https://www.servicenow.com/solutions/creator-workflows/citizen-development-program.html
Unleash the power of distributed developers with ServiceNow. Build apps quickly with IT oversight, guardrails, and governance for all skill levels.
ServiceNow assets:
- Catalog Builder: Learn more
- Catalog Templates: Learn more
- App Engine Studio (AES): Learn more
- Decision Tables: Learn more
- Flow Designer: Learn more
- App Engine Management Center (AEMC): Learn more
- ServiceNow Studio: Learn more
Published by Sylvain Hauser
From his internship at ServiceNow in 2007 to his certification as a Technical Architect (CTA), Sylvain has spent most of his professional life leading innovation with ServiceNow.
