Presenters: Ryan Manning & Molly Feterl
Session title: Project Management Workbench - a New Way to Work
Having run a both a PMO and an agile Software Development Organization in my career, I'm pretty excited to see how Project (PPM) is shaping up in Fuji. I just finished attending Ryan Manning's presentation, Project Management Workbench — a New Way to Work, and I have to say, Workbench is doing a pretty good job of addressing a real world challenge.
The challenge
PMs use project management best practice to deliver. For most a PMI certification is required for them to even hold the position in Project Management. One of the first things a PM does after scoping is create a project plan, complete with dates and milestones and resource allocations. Stakeholders will loom over PMs until this plan is delivered, and the plan is used to hold the project team accountable.
Agile Development is the opposite. The concept of applying time constraints (or points) is this last thing that happens before development (sprinting) begins. And generally the time horizon for an agile development team is a couple weeks. Development is done though prioritization of requirements (users stories), then packaged into manageable chucks that can be delivered in short order. Allowing the Stakeholders to add to, refine or change their initial requirements. Typically, stakeholders like this part (once they get used to the lingo) but they still want their project plan! After decades of doing things the old way — it's hard to change.
However, ServiceNow has built a bridge with the new Project Workbench. Workbench gives hybrid waterfall and agile support so you can ease your transition into the Agile world. I think this is pretty exciting. I asked Ryan Manning after his presentation, "What are you most excited about in Fuji?". Here are Ryan's picks:
- Performance improvements (app response time)
- Platform UI/UX changes to make managing project work easier
- Project Workbench
- Integration with SDLC Scrum (i.e. - Agile Project Management)
- Live Feed Improvements for Ideation
- Demand Workbench
Top take-a-ways from today's presentation
- Project management is broken. Exercising the old "command and control" approach from an ultra-powerful PMO doesn't work anymore. PMOs must shift from process enforcers operating in disparate, on-premises project management system, to trusted advisors of the project team within a cloud-based single system of engagement for work.
- PMO's and Project Managers need to transform from dictators, to enablers and risk managers, or they will disappear from the enterprise. Today, most project managers are consumed by status updates and reacting b/c their primary focus is on reporting. Project Managers need to become team-centric coaches. They need to be perceived as project enablers that are capable of removing roadblocks and mitigating risk. They need to be more strategic.
- ServiceNow is committed to this space and is unleashing tools to help project managers and team members unite in a common cause and work smarter & faster than ever before.
Advice from ServiceNow product management
Ryan had some good advice for customers who are considering implementing PPM. Here are his tips:
Modernizing your PMO is not just about the tool. It requires a somewhat dramatic change in the traditional approach to project management that's existed over the last 20 years. This will be an emotional shift for your project teams so remember to be open to this change. We suggest the following:
- Understand the vision of PPM within the organization
- Need Executive Sponsorship that supports the vision and can communicate it to their peers because vision and commitment needs to start at the top and be communicated down
- Clarify what is needed from current process and tool going forward.
- NOW is the right time to change/mature the current process & tool
- Define and document the process along with the requirements needed to support the process.
- Categorize the requirements so that the implementation is a phased approach. Start with a pilot group, small successes.
- Keep it simple for phase one. Start utilizing the Project and Portfolio Suite along with the other applications in the platform, then you can mature the process and the tool when you have a greater understand of the ServiceNow's capabilities.
- Identify how Project will interface with existing functions and processes — Agile, finance, GRC, service delivery (Incident, Change, CMDB, Knowledge…)
- Define an appropriate governance structure with roles & responsibilities
Let's get the party started
It's party time, Ryan and the burning question is, "If Project Workbench was having a ServiceNow Platform party, who would you invite and why?
- Service Management — Full integration with Service Management is by far our most valuable possession. A core challenge to traditional project management is the fact that project team members refuse to log into these rigid, complex PPM solutions that are disparate from their day-to-day operational tools. In ServiceNow, you're teams have a single location for both operational and strategic project work. This removes the project manager from the administrative burden of updating tasks all day.
- GRC — Governing projects and managing risk is not only project management best practice, many certification frameworks, and even some regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley also require evidenced of these disciplines in action. You can easily tie key deliverables and approvals from Project, directly into your GRC activities on ServiceNow.
- CMDB — A lot of our customers LOVE our natural integration into the CMDB. The ability to have a single view of all the activities occurring around a C.I. Is extremely important. For example, if I get a demand for a change to the ERP and I can view the change window to predict delivery dates. Or, view other information to establish the risk of taking on this project.
- Knowledge Management — Very important for Project Documentation. For example, I could have an action to store all project artifacts to the Knowledge Base for future use. For example, let's say I did a big ERP implementation 3 years ago and I have a new request to upgrade that system. I can search through the Knowledge Base to find out what we may have struggled with during the implementation.
Product Management Shout Out
Big thanks to Ryan Manning, Product Manager and Molly Feterl, Senior Technical Consultant, for helping me get the word out today.
Want to know more?
The Project Management application is a suite of tools that aids in managing projects, tasks, and resources. It provides the ability to create and manage projects of all sizes, from small projects with a few tasks to large portfolios of projects that contain complex tasks with various relationships and dependencies.
The project workbench provides a central location for creating and managing projects. The workbench supports the project management and application life cycle management applications, allowing for a hybrid approach to project management. Project managers can create projects that combine both waterfall and agile methodologies and add waterfall, agile, and test phases to these projects.
