Getting Started Guide for Digital Product Release

gregholevas · ‎04-01-2024

Welcome to ServiceNow® Digital Product Release

Are you ready to start your Digital Product Release (“DPR”) implementation journey? This guide gives you valuable information you can share with your team, including proven guidance and links to key resources—all designed to set you on the path to success. While this guide is primarily designed for ServiceNow platform owners, it also contains useful information if you have a different role in your organization.

Let’s get started!

Guide overview

Here’s an overview of the topics we will cover in the guide:

Digital Product Release overview
Achievable business outcomes from Digital Product Release
Chart a path to successful implementation
- Work with ServiceNow experts
- Prepare for self-implementation
- Before getting started
- Steps to quick success
Other helpful resources

Start by familiarizing yourself with Digital Product Release

Digital Product Release is a release process orchestrator, enabling product teams, either central or distributed, to plan and deliver new versions of software products consistently within the automated guardrails and visibility of central IT. DPR is designed to help organizations manage the process in which they ensure products/apps are ready to deploy, but does NOT encompass the capabilities to facilitate the actual development, testing, and deployment itself. Instead, DPR works with the development, testing, and deployment tools that you already use.

To provide rapid updates, DPR is delivered to customers through the ServiceNow^® Store. After downloading and installing the plugins, DPR has a guided admin setup experience to make it simpler to deploy and quicker to get to value.

Digital Product Release: Automate your release readiness process and validation. (product page)(product documentation) (Store app page)

Installing the main plugin automatically installs a suite of applications including:

Digital Product Release Data Model: The data model for Digital Product Release. It defines the tables and relationships for release management. (Store app page)
Digital Product Release Workspace: Workspace to manage your products and features, and plan versions for release execution. (Store app page)
Digital Product Release Policy Content Pack: Data collectors and policies to enable the automation of phase gate verification in Digital Product Release. (Store app page)

If you are new to ServiceNow, we strongly recommend that you take this short Get Started with the Now Platform course to learn platform basics. If you want a deeper dive into using the Now Platform, a longer ServiceNow Fundamentals course is also available.

Achievable business outcomes with Digital Product Release

DPR allows you to deliver many positive business outcomes, and you can achieve all of this over time. However, by deciding which outcomes are most important for your organization and agreeing on them with your stakeholders, you can set clear expectations and tailor your initial implementation to realize these goals. Some of the achievable business outcomes would be:

Provide central IT with end-to-end visibility into release readiness across products being delivered
Automate the validation of release readiness by using release policies and fit-for-purpose release templates
Empower product teams to know when they are ready to release and how their work is measured
Simplify and shift-left release and change processes, accelerating each

To successfully deploy DPR, you need your business to understand and use the product, and to recognize its benefits. With many different stakeholder groups, it is essential to ensure everyone understands the benefits for them, and how to get the most value out of the system.

This webpage provides detailed guidance on how to plan for organizational change. If you need help creating a winning communications plan, this communications plan template also provides useful advice.

Chart a path to successful implementation

Work with ServiceNow experts

If you have chosen to work with a ServiceNow partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for your implementation, it’s important to clearly communicate the business outcomes you want to achieve and agree on a well-structured roadmap to attain these goals. If you need guidance on successfully engaging with an implementation partner, this workbook is an excellent starting point.

To accelerate time to value and reduce risk, make sure that your partner uses Now Create, ServiceNow’s library of more than 700 leading implementation practices. We also recommend you use Now Create if you are self-implementing, as it provides a wealth of assets designed to guide you to success.

If you want to work with a partner but haven’t selected one yet, check out our Partner Finder or talk to your ServiceNow account representative about ServiceNow Expert Services.

For those of you who have purchased ServiceNow Impact services you will have ServiceNow experts and resources at your fingertips to help you through your implementation of DPR and achieving your goals. If you do not have a ServiceNow Impact package, consider how having dedicated resources, discounted training, and jumpstart services can help you get the most out of your ServiceNow investment. Read more here.

Prepare for self-implementation

Build your team’s skills

If you are planning to self-implement, you need to give your platform team the skills they need to succeed. The best way of doing this is to become a certified ServiceNow professional. We offer several certification paths for different roles on your team. Check out the links below:

For DPR specific training check out the following on demand course. By completing, you'll earn a DPR Accreditation:

DPR Implementation Bootcamp

The following courses are also a great starting point for training your release managers, product managers, and other DPR users:

Make your implementation smooth and easy

For a comprehensive implementation process framework that is proven to scale to the largest, most complex global deployments, take a look at our Success Packs on Now Create. Success Packs tailor our core Now Create methodology of more than 700 leading practices to deliver business outcomes aligned with specific product sets. A Success Pack for DPR is currently in the works, but the following are also helpful to review:

Modernize IT Service Management supports a modern comprehensive ITIL-based ITSM platform to replace legacy tools.
Enterprise DevOps Foundations enables businesses to connect their organization's toolchain, automate change management and share insights to provide transparency and continual improvement.

Join the Digital Product Release Community

Visit the DPR community page. You’ll find best practices and other useful resources for your implementation, and it’s also the forum to talk to ServiceNow experts, get your questions answered, and connect with other community members.

Understand ServiceNow releases and upgrades

If you’re not already on the latest ServiceNow release, we strongly recommend that you upgrade before you go live. By upgrading, you get new ServiceNow innovations into the hands of your users faster, get access to the latest performance and security enhancements, and ensure that support is there when you need it. To make your upgrade smooth and successful, look at these upgrade resources.

Digital Product Release requires Vancouver Patch 5 as the minimum ServiceNow version, so if you have not upgraded to at least Vancouver, you will not be able to take advantage of DPR.

Bookmark these resources!

ServiceNow Customer Success Center -- The CSC is a one-stop shop that gives you instant access to proven methodologies, leading practices, and expert insights and advice.

NowSupport -- You can get technical issues resolved quickly by contacting our team comprised of ServiceNow employees with deep product knowledge and real-world experience. Read more here on how to use support.