ServiceNow Platform

[kathymorris]

Hi All,

Recently joined new team and there is no one who has ServiceNow experience besides myself. I have several years of SN experience. One Service Desk technician has recently started trying to learn ServiceNow and is the gatekeeper for the environments. 

We have an upgrade scheduled. The only person who has Admin-access is the ServiceDesk tech (aka SN trainee). The company is requesting me to do the upgrade to Prod, clones from Prod-->Test, and implement other SN modules. For some reason, they seem to think no one needs Admin access (besides the trainee) because it's "just a click away" so it's a matter of me teaching the training which buttons to click. 

Guidance is fine here and there. However, I am not comfortable taking "the responsibility" of upgrading an environment that I know absolutely nothing about and have never had access to navigate around in core areas to evaluate and assess impact. (i.e. the company does not give access to contractors). 

In my experience, whenever I did upgrades I conducted an analysis of the Production environment, reconciled skipped records, etc... and made decisions based on my findings. Even to clone from Prod to the sub environment, I would leverage access via Prod.

Never been in this situation. Whenever Admin access was not granted, there was another "qualified" ServiceNow SME to do the work in Prod so there was no issue. My question is: What do my fellow ServiceNow peers think of this? Am I missing something here?

Btw, this particular trainee is not software development inclined...

Your thoughts?

Best,

Kathy

[Mark Roethof]

Hi there,

"because it's "just a click away""

Pfff difficult one if that's the thought 🤔 Sure it's kinda one click away... Already like what you are describing yourself, there's more to it.

Feels a bit like if people have such an opinion, do they have any knowledge of ServiceNow? If that's the thought, I wouldn't even consider starting the upgrade. Sounds like a few workshops with the people having that thought would be a better idea, to explain them in what area they are in, what is involved with Upgrades, the why, etc..

[kathymorris]

Hello everyone,

The insanity has stepped up to a whole new level... The Company made the decision to upgrade Prod / Test and Dev without any testing, no review of skipped records, no quality checks, no configurations.... After all the warnings, they feel it is just a matter of having the trainee schedule the upgrade via the Hi Portal. Because after all, "they are not a development shop."

The powers that be took the approach..... "If anything breaks, they will just fix it later."
After all, the users will not even notice these new updates because "we have not customized much"...

[LearnUseThrive]

Absolutely wild. Is this a big company or tiny? 

Anyway, you don't even have Admin access, so you couldn't upgrade ServiceNow even if you wanted to, so if they want to set their pants on fire, that's on them.

[kathymorris]

A large size company. Approximately 7500 employees. Annual revenue over $800M. I am not getting involved with the car about to crash--regardless of how much they keep drilling "train me." No issue sharing some pointers. However, I am not hired to train a trainee who has absolutely no clue about software development and ServiceNow.