Development and ITSM best practices ... working together

[Diane22]

I am hoping to hear from the community or find some servicenow best practice /recommendations.

context 🙂

we have over 3k applications (server, cloud, database, C++ etc) with different support models (IT supported, business supported, vendor supported, hybrids.  These are managed consistently across the enterprise leveraging ITSM practices:

• they are defined as a CI in the CMDB, which allows us to manage with their attributes (criticality, support level, managed by, offerings, receive data from, send data to, depends on, etc).
• the business goes to a unique portal 
• they are subject to all active practices as required (incident, request, MI, problem, change, etc) to manage risk

i was initially thinking to manage the ServiceNow Studio developed applications in the same manner as this functionality will quickly gain in popularity, and was concerned about recording all under the one CI (ServiceNow).

There is an appetite to manage everything leveraging Agile, which i am concerned about ... but these are times of change, and maybe i need to change.  but ...

• only 1 CI called servicenow, creates a challenge in managing individual attributes 
• • additional challenge by needing to use data mining (description) to understand which application this pertains to (data accuracy)
• creates a second location for the business to go to (portal for some apps, and agile for others)
• second stream for incidents (now defects) and requests (now enhancements)
• challenge in managing versioning (change) 
• ownership (managed by)
• concern about creating a developer 'silo' not bound by ITSM practices
• reporting impact 
• service desk impact - knowledge

Surely there is someone else who has experience with both ITSM and application development in ServiceNow.  I was hoping to gain from their learnings and have some insight on how they manage these apps.  I don't really care about how many CI's we have, i'm more concerned about having the right number of CI's to deliver efficiently to the business and be able to improve (reporting for trends and gaps/ CSI)

I can certainly see the benefits of Agile during the development phase, but I do tend to see these apps going live leveraging change, and sustaining both a single portal for the business as well as  leveraging CMDB and ITSM practices once they are defined as operational.

I am open to the fact that i may be "old school" and need to change, but seeking feedback as a first step ... thoughts ?

thank you for your time,

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

This is an interesting question (which means I do not know the right answer or there may not be a "right" answer ;)).

But, to offer some perspective, have you looked at the Common Service Data Model? There's different ways to look at an application, from technical, design, SDLC and business perspective. You can find the latest whitepaper here:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_article&sys_id=c981db3a1b018154ccc253da234bc...

Agile is the way to go IMO in lieu of dynamic business and changing requirements. DevOps is another concept which works great, especially for change process, in minimizing disruptions after go-live and ensuring proper testing. 

In my company we constantly create new apps on ServiceNow for internal use. We definitely follow an agile development lifecycle for those, we do have a demand and change process in place as well.

In terms of CMDB classes I don't think I would see an issue in all those apps being tied to the ServiceNow application class. Not like you're going to discover or do a service mapping for them anyway 🙂 So it is most important to just have those exposed to business and to uderstand the support group for each, the product owner etc. IMO.

Sorry if this adds more questions than answers...

[Diane22]

Tomasz,

thank you for the additional information.  I am familiar with CSDM but didn't catch that 4 was published.  this is great as we plan to improve our Portfolio definitions.   in our environment, these applications would actually be linked to a Business Service for governance and change approvals as well as have a service offering for support;  so service mapping  would be in scope.

Also, having these as CI's allows our reporting to manage both the quality of service delivery, add KA's as needed and manage the demand as well.  The big item as well is to maintain the single point of entry into IT for everything with the portal.

Not so concerned about the CI classes as much as being able to manage criticality, managed by group and relationships (ie:  CI A sends data to CI B; CI A receives data from CI B; CI A depends on CI B etc ... )

[Mohit Kaushik]

Hi Diane,

I would suggest you to check on Now Create, Its an official place for learning about best practices or how to implement some module. I think it should be helpful.

Home - Now Create (service-now.com)

Please mark this as correct and helpful if it resolved the query or lead you in right direction.

Thanks,
Mohit Kaushik
Community Rising Star 2022

[Diane22]

will definitely check out Now Create, thank you !