I have been finding recently that the number of context switches I am doing in my role is becoming tricky to manage, and the way I organise my tasks and prioritise some elements of my work is not working as well as I like.
Every few years I tend to take a fresh look at the way I'm approaching time management and my workload. My role changes, the nature of my work changes, tech solutions that can support me change. I think it's a valuable thing to do.
As part of doing this thinking, I stumbled across Collaborative Work Management and spent some time playing around with it. It is part of our Strategic Portfolio Management application.
As a sort of confession up front; the conclusion I've drawn for me personally is that I will not use. The main reason for that being the overlap between what I do in the ServiceNow Impact IDE as an Impact PA. It’s too great - and effectively doubles much of my administration.
That's me though; I'm certainly not representative. Some thoughts on what I thought initially though.
Accessing the workspace for CWM for the first time I was struck by how prominent simple documentation and guidance was made available to get me up to speed. A short video, followed by a guided tour, and a series of tasks for me to work through to set myself up.
I wanted to look at it from say, an ITIL users perspective not an admins too. And collaborate with them. I quickly created a new space "My Personal Space", shared it with the ITIL User, created a single task in it.
A quick review of the docs showed that setting the property 'sn_cwm.request_role_access' to true allows users without access, to request it - subject to an admin configuring an appropriate response as a result of the event sn_cwm.REQUEST_ROLE_ACCESS firing.
When ITIL User hits the workspace they now see this:-
Ultimately, whether that's a service request created and assigned to an admin to grant the role, or automation to grant the role after approval, or a notification to ask an admin to do the work - it all translates to the same thing: getting the user in question the role sn_cwm.cwm_user
With that done, ITIL User now sees this:-
There own tour, set of tasks to complete to get up to speed with the capabilities of this workspace, and access to the new space I shared with them. I can see the tasks in the new board. I'm collaborating in no time.
Inside a space, it's possible to create folders, documents inside those folders with an array of templates, shared boards.
Creating a number of tasks to assigned to myself, ITIL User and Plan
What's evident quite soon after playing around with the basics and in only a few minutes, is that it's fantastically quick to be up and running with a functioning board in which I can collaborate with colleagues quickly on docs, tasks for an initiative I am running.
It's equally obvious I've barely scratched the surface.
I'm interested enough that I've added the now learning CWM bootcamp training to my learning queue (which is disturbingly long, and getting longer not shorter).
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