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Welcome to my latest blog post, where I've gathered a treasure trove of official governance and policy resources from ServiceNow. As the platform continues to evolve and organizations increasingly rely on it for their digital transformations, it's crucial to ensure that your instance is well-governed, secure, and optimized for performance.
That's where this comprehensive compilation comes in handy.
With resources that cover a wide range of topics, such as agile development, platform management, security, testing strategies, and more, this collection will serve as a one-stop shop to help you make the most of your ServiceNow investment.
Whether you're a seasoned Service Management professional or just starting your journey, these resources will guide you through best practices and help you drive success with the platform.
Reading Notes:
- I would advise any wanting to mature their organization's ServiceNow governance to use the Get started with ServiceNow governance worksheet from the Customer Success Center while using the below resources to enrich and accelerate your implementation and adoption.
- Building on this, I would like to introduce my personal evolution on established Governance Theory through The Governance Topology. It is intended to make the governance conversation more explicit and tangible by detailing elements of governance that you can refer to, instead of being stuck in a conversation about "what a governance board is, and whether you have one or not." The Governance Topology
- In extension hereof, I have authored The Adaptive Governance Framework V.1 - ServiceNow Community which is using The Governance Topology as a base framework to guide enterprises on when to use what governance functions, authorities, and processes depending on the dimensions of the planning item in question (e.g., demand or solution design).
- You can find resources of specific interest to you by searching for the subcategory column based on the index below.
Happy exploring!
Getting Started
Get Started with ServiceNow FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Get started with ServiceNow governance
The core structure used to define this starter template for Governance. Contains lots of additional descriptions and collateral.
What is IT governance? - ServiceNow
Introduction to IT Governance.
Success Template: ServiceNow governance implementation project plan
You should approach implementing ServiceNow governance with a similar rigor that you apply to technical implementations. Use this template as a starter to document your project plan for implementing ServiceNow governance.
Governance Implementation Toolkit
Get tools to accelerate your governance implementation.
Strategic Governance
Strategic Direction
State your transformation vision and outcomes
Many organizations have digital transformation as a strategic imperative, but few state a vision that translates into tangible and realistic measures of success that can inform planning and budget decisions.
Beyond Technical - Setting Sails for an Unsiloed Future
Embrace the challenges of the 'us' VS 'them' mentality in IT, and help breach the gap.
Strategic Organization
Don't buy a big boat if you don't have a crew
Understand how many FTEs your ServiceNow instance needs.
Build a ServiceNow platform team
Get inspired on resources needed to run your platform.
ServiceNow Platform Team Estimator
Use the Platform Team Estimator to find out how many people you need to build your team and get a shareable estimate report.
Platform Team Roles Responsibilities - Customer Success - ServiceNow
You need the right individuals and skill sets on your core ServiceNow team and the right buy-in
and support from your extended ServiceNow team to successfully implement and maintain your
Now Platform® and to realize maximum value from ServiceNow.
ServiceNow Center of Excellence and Innovation
Set the foundations for your CoEI
Define a charter and structure for your CoEI
Define your engagement and delivery model with business, service, and process owners
Define the right resourcing model
Operationalize your CoEI and advance your vision for digital transformation.
Partner selection and management
Develop your ServiceNow® partner strategy.
Strategic Reporting Standards
Understand the estimated ROI on a ServiceNow investment
Value management for your ServiceNow investments
To realize—and manage—the value you get from your ServiceNow investments, you’ll need to build an effective, end-to-end process for value management for your ServiceNow investments. These resources will help you do just that.
Portfolio Governance
Idea and Demand Management
How to gather and evaluate requirements
In this blog post, I touch on the topic of user stories and how I have seen them used at different clients and partners, and how the pitfalls related to the observed usage the user story format might be overcome.
Understand if you are leveraging all the capabilities you paid for.
Digital workflows can transform enterprise productivity. ServiceNow helps you create a vision for transformation that cascades into a powerful business case and roadmap.
This Success Playbook will help you create a persuasive business case to get approval and funding for your ServiceNow investment.
This overview shows the processes and best practices you’ll need to implement, maintain, and get maximum value from IT Business Management applications. The Demand Management Success Map outlines four stages: Success Foundations, Implement, Run, and Optimize and Expand.
Manage demand for the Now Platform
Create visibility by building a demand intake model
Take control by enhancing, prioritizing, and approving demands
Align approved demands to business outcomes
Increase velocity and plan future demand.
How do I evaluate demands using ServiceNow?
With demand evaluation, you can assess the value and risk of demands and your capacity to undertake the work so you can approve the right investments at the right time.
User Story Management
How do I create effective user personas?
Know your user types and how to cater to them.
How do I create effective user journey maps?
This map will help you identify where there are opportunities to improve a process or the user experience throughout the process.
Get inspired on leading practices for creating user stories.
Rank stories against each other based on standard criteria.
Portfolio Reporting Standards
Build precision and discipline in how you measure and communicate the value you get from your ServiceNow investments. ServiceNow helps your team take advantage of effective metrics to track, communicate, and take action on your progress.
A checklist to measure value against today’s actuals.
How should I improve value from ServiceNow?
It's critical that your implementation delivers the value you defined in your ServiceNow® business case. Measuring the value you've achieved will identify both successes and opportunities to course correct.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure value from your ServiceNow investments.
Technical Governance
Policy Domains
Environment Governance - Customer Success - ServiceNow
Get inspired on domains that should be governed and addressed via policies.
Architecture
Plan your architecture, instances, integrations, and data flows
The development of your architecture, instance strategy, and data strategy for the Now Platform® need to be considered through a technical lens and to be driven by your business context and objectives for transformation. Decisions you make with respect to key architecture question— like whether to pursue a multi- or single-instance approach—require consideration first by relevant business considerations, both in terms of your current situation and future considerations that may affect your Now Platform expansion.
Architecture & Technical Questionnaire
Get an overview of your current technical architecture.
Instance Definition Assessment
Get inspired to cover important facets of platform governance and usage through a guided questionnaire.
Integrations – Product Architecture Blueprint
Get an overview of integration capabilities and how to utilize out of the box functionality to embed your ServiceNow® instance into your ecosystem.
Decision tree and resources for determining if on-premises installation is for your organization.
Solution Design
Design an engaging self-service employee and customer experience
Build a shared understanding of your vision for the improvement of the employee and customer experience. Design and monitor the experience.
Create Value - Customer Success - ServiceNow
Get to value faster with our prescriptive methodology and leading practices. With our expert guidance, you can more easily scale the creation and adoption of enterprise workflows.
Introduction: Solution Overview
Get inspired on how to manage solutions within the ServiceNow® platform.
What is an experience architect?
An individual who uses human-centered design thinking to help identify and deliver innovation opportunities using ServiceNow.
ServiceNow® Platform Questionnaire
The information provided in this questionnaire supports your ServiceNow platform strategy and
maintenance. The question responses will inform ServiceNow solution design and ongoing ServiceNow
platform management.
Technical Design
Get away from the 'out-of-the-box' box
A small rant on the buzzword of 'OOB' and its use.
What are the best practices for customization?
What criteria should I use to determine whether to customize?
Customization best practices for ServiceNow
Our successful customers limit their customization to clear, demonstrated business needs and avoid the management pitfalls that lead to excessive, unsustainable customization. To do this, you should build governance policies and structures that promote business-smart customization and use our recommended development mechanisms and tools to minimize your technical complexity.
Data
Define ServiceNow data governance
Get inspiration for data policies.
What are data governance frameworks?
Data governance frameworks are collections of rules, roles, and processes designed to help ensure that an organization is properly managing its data.
CSDM with Charles the Baker - part 1
Understand the foundation and crawl stage of CSDM.
CSDM with Charles the Baker - part 2
Understand the walk stage of CSDM.
Security
Foundation - Architecture Blueprint - Security
Get inspired on security dimensions of ServiceNow.
ServiceNow security best practice guide
Key considerations for securing your instance.
Security and Technical Questionnaire
Get an overview of your Security Architecture
Privacy Management – Process Guide
Get inspired by the security measures that can be taken within the ServiceNow® platform.
Development Standards
Define ServiceNow development management practices
Get inspiration for development policies.
Getting started with linter checks – proactively guard your instance with defined development policies.
Getting Started With Linter Checks
Checks are singular focused rules that detect anomalies or opportunities in an instance. These checks can run against tables, records, or metadata. Checks are defined to identify security, upgrade best practices, manageability, user experience and performance vulnerabilities.
ServiceNow Secure Coding guide for Instance developers
Get inspired on leading practices for secure development.
Manage application development on the Now Platform
Get workbooks on application and citizen development.
Testing Standards
Get inspired on testing strategies.
User Acceptance Test Plan Template
Get inspired on planning and executing of UATs.
Process Guide: User Acceptance Test Scenarios & Scripts
Get insights into leading practices for UAT management.
User Acceptance Test Preparation Checklist Template
Get inspiration for checks ensuring your UAT is on the right track.
Platform Management Standards
Is ServiceNow slow, or is it just you?
Understand the performance of your instance. An exhaustive list of performance management tools and services.
Discover your own monster of Frankenstein
Understand the level of customization on your instance.
Understand the advantages of Flow vs Workflow.
Utilize the preview upgrade function to avoid sweat and tears.
Thoughts on skipped change management and free resources.
ServiceNow instance performance and maintenance
Keep your instance healthy with proactive maintenance. When you follow a cadence with prescribed tasks, you'll prevent possible performance issues and outages and maintain a good user experience.
Define platform management practices
Get inspired on policy areas to cover within the Platform Management domain.
How do I perform ServiceNow upgrades?
Get inspired on leading practices for upgrade management.
Get inspired on leading practices for best practices.
What’s the process to review and address skipped changes?
Get inspired on leading practices for managing skipped updates during an upgrade.
Get inspired to follow leading practices for upgrade management.
Upgrade Architecture & Technical Questionnaire
The purpose is to make sure the existing System Architecture accounts for all the impacted systems, processes and integrations that the ServiceNow upgrade might impact, and any known dependencies.
Technical Governance Assessment
Technical Governance Assessment
Assess the technical governance of your platform.
Technical Reporting Standards
Build performance dashboards using ServiceNow Performance Analytics
Your must build dashboards that show performance trends based on the KPIs you defined. The best dashboards are customized, so they include only relevant metrics, using the right visualizations (daily change view versus aggregate view, for example) to help users, such as the ServiceNow stakeholders viewing the dashboard, to make quick, informed decisions.
Additional Resources
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)
Break down silos to manage risk and strengthen compliance across the business.
Governance - Customer Success - ServiceNow
A collection of ServiceNow® resources related to governance.
Get inspired to create a template structure for your standard operating procedures.
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