Governing Release Template Creations

[onedapaone]

Dear ServiceNow Team,

I understand that a Release Manager or Central Release Team within any group of product teams can own the creation of Release Templates through the Release Admin role.

However, I seek guidance on a scenario where a central/global process team defines and governs the Release Management process across the organization. In this scenario, different types of applications, products, and platform teams adhere to the global high-level process but have their own variations of Release Process phases and tasks.

Given this diversity, global Release Templates might not suit all types of product/platform teams. Conversely, allowing each product/platform team to create their own Release Templates could pose governance challenges and lead to inconsistencies in adhering to the central/global process.

What guidance can you provide based on your design principles and experiences with clients in similar situations?

Is it feasible to implement a Service Request/Approval flow for the central/global process team to review and approve each Release Template upon creation? While this could ensure governance and consistency, it might also become an overhead for the central team and result in a large number of templates in the Digital Product Release (DPR) system.

Any other better alternatives or suggestions you can share please.

Thank you.

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @onedapaone 

In this case, I recommend setting up a governance team and adding a step in your process where, whenever any team wants to use or build their own release template, they must get approval from the governance team. This will help avoid duplicate templates and ensure that a standard template is used. Additionally, it's no longer just about the tool or platform; it's more about education and awareness for users. You could also create a custom role to restrict template creation to a specific set of users, which would minimize the risk.

[onedapaone]

Dear Atul,

Regarding your comment about custom role : //You could also create a custom role to restrict template creation to a specific set of users, which would minimize the risk.//

Is it possible to separate or delimit the access provided to the default roles through these custom roles?

For example: Release Template Creation and Release Calendar Creation & Manage - Both need sn_dpr_release.admin role; But we would like to provide Release Calendar creation for Program Managers / Release Coordinators and keep the Release Template Creation only with "Release Admin" role - is this possible to implement?

Thanks for your response.

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @onedapaone 

I think you're right, and my assumption or solution isn’t going to work here. There’s only one role, and it has been configured for all templates, so we can’t separate that. To do so, we’d need updates from the backend or in the correct code, which we don't have access to. Since the templates will be stored in one table only, I’m open to hearing from the ServiceNow team on this.

[onedapaone]

Also, my question is, is it possible to have the approval from central governance team be configured in DPR for any release template creation? So that tool adheres to the process. - Again, this approach might lead to more number of templates, so would like to hear from ServiceNow team, if this is the best approach or anything else they have seen so far?