CSDM - How to manage Business Process?

[Stig Brandt]

Hi all

Business Process Object seems to come more and more into the picture OOTB, has anyone come up with a good model for example including -> Business Capability(Procure Materials and Services, Procurement), Business Process(steps, ex. Procure2Pay), Business Services(Procurement, Service Offerings(Procurement Request, Application Services(Procurement App)?

I want to monitor/report on different levels Business Capabilities and Business Process, Business Services?

Here is some more of my observations as background for the question @mary_lindell from a technical point of view, you are right, it is more how will be the recommended approach for this object from CSDM/ServiceNow point of view, with some good examples, as

• Business Process is a reference to Business Application, meaning, that a Business Application is "only supporting" - One Business Process?
• Business Process is NOT an attribute on the task table, as for example - Business Application, Business Service, Service Offering are, so you cannot capture "Business Process" on related process, which I find missing
• Business Process is NOT an object in DPM - Digital Portfolio Management - Workspace, so will we see any reporting aggregation here?
• Business Process is not mentioned in SPM Service Portfolio Catalog as an object, can of course be added, but what is the recommendation
• Some companies are using Business process criticality and then all components(services, application services, servers, database etc. that support the process is critical, what is the recommendation here?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[mary_lindell]

Hi Stig,

You may find the Common Service Data Model, CSDM, v4.0 white paper helpful. Also Mark Bodman, a ServiceNow Senior Product Manager and co-author of the CSDM Whitepaper, has several YouTube videos on the ServiceNow Community Channel that cover how business capabilities, processes, services, and products are intended to be modeled in the ServiceNow. Here is one of the videos that you may find useful, Digital Product and CSDM.

[Stig Brandt]

Hi all, thanks for the input very valid

Here is some more of my observations as background for the question @mary_lindell from a technical point of view, you are right, it is more how will be the recommended approach for this object from CSDM/ServiceNow point of view, with some good examples, as

• Business Process is a reference to Business Application, meaning, that a Business Application is "only supporting" - One Business Process?
• Business Process is NOT an attribute on the task table, as for example - Business Application, Business Service, Service Offering are, so you cannot capture "Business Process" on related process, which I find missing
• Business Process is NOT an object in DPM - Digital Portfolio Management - Workspace, so will we see any reporting aggregation here?
• Business Process is not mentioned in SPM Service Portfolio Catalog as an object, can of course be added, but what is the recommendation
• Some companies are using Business process criticality and then all components(services, application services, servers, database etc. that support the process is critical, what is the recommendation here?

[CMDB Whisperer · Accepted solution]

Spoiler: Business Process hasn't really been fully modeled in ServiceNow CSDM or in the platform data model itself at this time.  This has been acknowledged by the CSDM team.  What that means is that whatever you do with Business Process you might need/want to refactor down the road once they come up with standard models and platform capabilities.  Third Party Risk Management, Privacy Management, and Business Continuity Management are some areas to keep an eye on for emerging standards and capabilities.  In the meantime, my recommendation would be to keep the relationships in this area relatively high-level and stick to a standard relationship type such as "Depends On" to associate the relevant CIs.

[Jim Federline]

>>>"In the meantime, my recommendation would be to keep the relationships in this area relatively high-level and stick to a standard relationship type such as "Depends On" to associate the relevant CIs."

This thread should have this added, as this is existing OOTB functionality, which I hope is preserved as CSDM is updated to model Business Processes related to Business Applications:

See the cmdb_m2m_business_process_ci (Business Process to Configuration Items) table, which is a Related List available to the Business Process table as "Related Assets", and likewise is a Related List available to the Business Applications table as "Business Processes".

What is not generally known is that should you add these Related Lists to these two tables, and then Edit the list to add a record to the m2m table, a business rule "Create CMDB CI relationships" then also creates a Depends on::Used By CI Relationship between the Bus app and Bus Proc records, with the parent set to be the Business Process.

We are using Business Process in liu of Business Capability, as that is how our EA team has modeled the enterprise. This OOTB functionality is only documented under GRC:Risk (and those docs are incomplete), but this is available to use on the Platform without GRC or APM, just CMDB. 

[CMDB Whisperer]

Thanks for adding this for completeness!