Service Now Implementation

[mallardman]

My company is going through the plan to implement SN. Can anyone provide me with feedback on how they implemented SN and what were the lessons learned?

[HugoFirst]

Each company is different and what works for one company might not work for another. That said, here's some principles I recommend:

1. Understand the process you are implementing in ServiceNow. If that process is bad, clean it up prior to implementing it in SN. The best implementation can't makeup for a bad process.

2. Involve all stakeholder groups. This includes Self Service users, which is a poor label for them. I prefer "Business User/Requester". As opposed to the Technical/Provider type of user which has an ITIL license. If the users really are serving themselves, why would they need to make a request?

3. While implementing the software, have the intended end users run thru scenarios with the software in test before putting it into production. ( You aren't developing in production, right? ) This includes the requesting users and the users who will service the request.

4. When making changes to existing software, have a requirement that an end user must accept the change prior to putting it in production. Do this by having them test in the test env. You'll be surprised at what you learn from your users at this time and how you can misinterpret their earlier statments about changes they want to see.

I hope this helps.

[mallardman]

Thanks for the information. Great points you made.

[srgillis]

My biggest advice would be to use customization sparingly.

If you need to customize to be able to accomplish something big then I would go for it. But if you customize it to where it no longer resembles anything that any one else has - it can be really hard to maintain.

Ask yourself "What does this customization really do for me?" and if you have a great answer then go for it! If the answer is "Not much" I would skip it and use what comes out of the box.

[Inactive]

Howard,

How has it been going? Have you begun implementing ServiceNow yet? What has been your experience?