ServiceNow Development Process

[Rick Forristall]

I have a process question for fellow #ServiceNow developers. 

How do you manage your ServiceNow development cycle from request to completion? 

In ServiceNow using the Agile process? Epics > Stories, etc?

Using SCRUM or Kanban-style board?

If so, how do you show incidents on your boards -- do you take submitted incidents and create stories for them? 

Do you have demand management set up in ServiceNow and use it? 

Do you have people in your company email you directly with requests for enhancements or new ServiceNow custom apps/projects? 

I'm trying to think of an effective, easy way to be able to manage all our ServiceNow developments needs (bugs, enhancements, new project requests, etc) and I'm curious how other Snow dev teams are managing their process. 

For developers on teams in a Snow customer company: how does your team managing its dev process? 

For Snow partners: how have you seen your clients' dev teams handle this? 

Thanks in advance for your responses!

Rick Forristall
Sr. ServiceNow Developer
Freedom Financial Network

[Michael Fry1]

1 - Yes

2 - no, it's completed after someone submits

3 - NA

4 - We started with a few, then added more questions, then changed the values based on what we've been seeing. It's always reviewed to make better.

5 - it's mostly ME filling this out. Users would also want their enhancement at the top!

6 - No

7 - Development team

8 - Me

[Rick Forristall]

I wondered how you were balancing what the user thought was a priority versus the real priority.

Is what you're filling out part of the enhancement and you complete it after the enhancement is created? Or do you have some other form somewhere with those questions and associate it with a specific enhancement?

Thanks again--this has been very helpful as I start to refine some of our dev team processes.

Rick

[Michael Fry1]

Any ITIL user can submit an enhancement. Doesn't mean they will get it, but we will review. Once submitted, I'll come along an complete an assessment to get the scoring. Looks like this:

The score, ie 15, gives us the order to do the enhancements.

[Moy1]

Over the years, I have found that most ServiceNow development have their own 'tailored' version of agile development. Two of the most successful (in terms of through-put) teams, that I have worked with, were setup as such:

Team A

1. used Jira for development process management including Kanban board
2. used enhancement module to manage client enhancement requests. Related enhancement module to incident and service request
3. 2 week sprint cycle
4. Release to production as and when stories are tested and signed off by business 
5. Did not use Demand module

Team B

1. used ServiceNow agile 1.0 and considered moving to agile 2.0 but licensing became an issue since agile 2.0 used a dashboard available only through performance analytics premium
2. used service catalog to manage all client enhancement requests.
3. 2 week sprint cycle with fixed release cycles
4. Used Demand management module for new project requests only