A ServiceNow platform requires an effective governance body. Of course, every organization has its own ways to structure, staff, and organize its governance body. This article outlines activities and responsibilities of the constituents of a governance body. Nine stakeholder “roles” are required to oversee the operations of a ServiceNow platform. How and by whom these roles are taken is for the organization to define.
Each of these stakeholders can add backlog items to the backlog and should have an equal say on how to prioritize these backlog items.
Each stakeholder can also define criteria by which the gatekeepers (e.g. those who decide if and when to deploy) should consider and verify when making decisions and letting “process instances” (aka "stories") pass their quality gate.
Platform Owner
As the name suggests the platform owner “owns” the platform. The platform owner has ultimate decision power and is the highest escalation instance for any conflict or decision to be made.
In the context of the governance body, the Platform Owner is responsible that each stakeholder role is staffed.
Demand
The “Demand” stakeholder is responsible for the identification and the prioritization of requirements and the approval and testing of new and changed capabilities of the platform. Usually the day-to-day work of identifying, prioritizing and documentation of requirements is delegated to one or more “Product Owners”.
Product Owners
“Product Owners” are responsible to identify, document and prioritize requirements related to a defined area of the platform or one or more business or IT processes.
Development
The Development stakeholder is responsible for the output quality of the work of all developers. They own the Coding Guideline and those automated tests that are created and maintained by the development team.
Typically, the Development stakeholder demands criteria for the documentation of requirements before they are being worked on by the development team. These criteria are documented in the Definition of Ready.
Operations and Deployment
The Operations and Deployment stakeholder is accountable for all activities that administrators perform on all instances, and the deployment of applications to non-development instances.
The main concern of the stakeholder is operational stability. A key element is that what is delivered by the development team is deployed to target instances exactly as intended. Only then can testers verify shipped release packages and confirm that they are fit for purpose and that these can be deployed to production.
Data Quality
The “Data Quality” stakeholder is accountable for correct and complete data on the production instance. They also oversee that any data that should no longer be present on the production instance is archived and removed.
Each table of the ServiceNow that contains data should be associated to a stakeholder. It is unlikely that one person can manage that responsibility alone – so this stakeholder role should be shared between multiple stakeholders depending on the data.
Data Quality stakeholders may demand new or updated Instance Scan checks to be developed so that data quality can be monitored and managed on the production instance.
User Experience
The “User Experience” stakeholder’s main responsibility is to ensure that features are relevant, useable, and accessible to users. This stakeholder may have a say in the way new requirements are identified and described and how the user interfaces for these new capabilities are designed.
Once made available to users these capabilities can be checked through various means – from user interviews to statistical analysis of usage behavior. The “User Experience” stakeholder oversees these activities.
User satisfaction is their main concern – as adoption is driven by user experience and the feeling that an application is providing value.
Security
The “Security” stakeholder oversees all activities targeted to improve security on the platform. This starts with proper documentation of requirements considering what specific persona can or must not be able to do or access. It involves automated and manual testing activities and corresponding monitoring in production.
Security stakeholders may demand new or updated Instance Scan checks to be developed so that secure configuration can be monitored and managed on the production instance.
Artificial Intelligence
The “Artificial Intelligence” stakeholder is responsible for all AI-based activities on the platform – in development and production. They oversee, analyze and monitor the results produced by AI.
How this governance body may fit into a broader process is described in great detail in the whitepaper "A mature development and deployment" process.
Read the full story here:
https://www.wildgrube.com/download/A%20mature%20Development%20and%20Deployment%20Process.pdf
