question Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities in SPM forum

Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

MA17 — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 15:36:54 GMT

I would like to see a glossary of sorts on ServiceNow's perspective around what an initatiave vs Program, Strategic Program vs Program. How this relates to the hierarchy of Portfolio, Program, Project, Epics, Demands etc. I would appreciate if someone can provide a link to such information. Thanks

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

stevesmith — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 19:14:04 GMT

This documentation should get you started

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-it-business-management/page/product/project-portfolio-suite/concept/c_ProjectPortfolioSuite.html

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-it-business-management/page/product/program-management/concept/c_ProgramManagement.html

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-it-business-management/page/product/alignment-planner-workspace/concept/alignment-planner-workspace.html

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

J-Paul Millet — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 07:48:23 GMT

this documentation is great but it doesn’t clarify why we have the concept of program in PPM and Strategic Program in APW. There seem to be 2 different concepts. Right? It’s quite confusing. Thanks

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

Louis Savalli — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 15:56:10 GMT

It's over a year later and I'm still trying to understand this. ServiceNow has strategic objectives, strategic plans, strategic priorities, strategic programs, initiatives, goals, goals in the goal framework, and all of these have some degree of relationship to each other. If there is clarity on this, I'd love to have it.

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

JR Laprime — Mon, 13 May 2024 14:37:02 GMT

Would anyone from ServiceNow be willing to share some perspective on this question? My organization is beginning to plan our roll out of SPW and having this information during the initiation phase of this effort would be crucial.

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

User272466 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 17:32:50 GMT

It is another year later and still not clear on this topic!

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

Louis Savalli — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 19:53:54 GMT

At this point my advice is to take your goal/strategy structure, and your reporting/measurement/communication needs, and use those fields however they'll benefit you the most. There's just no formal guidance on this.

I find that putting goals in the sn_gf_goal table, and strategies in the sn_gf_strategy table (which are in the goal framework) is the best when it comes to OOB alignment. You can relate multiple goals to a demand or project, and you have several options for viewing that work in the Strategic Planning Workspace in the context of the goals/strategies. There are any number of other approaches, but so far this works the best in my experience.

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

User272466 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 20:32:23 GMT

In my case, I'm trying to represent a Company strategies -> Sector Strategies -> OKRs structure, but nothing about the SPM package documentation makes HOW to organize goals clear. I'm sure others are having the same problem. I've experimented with the Goals and Strategies tables as suggested, but then what? How do you visualize the goals after that when your structure is different than the single use case the documentation covers?

Re: Strategic Planning Workspace Entities

Louis Savalli — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 11:28:34 GMT

I would start by asking more questions:

How many company strategies are there and how often do they change?
- Same question for sector strategies and OKRs
Is it a strict hierarchy or can OKRs support multiple sector strategies, and similarly, can sector strategies support multiple company strategies?
How do the strategies and OKRs align with demands and projects? One per project/demand? Multiple? Can a project/demand align to one OKR, two sector strategies and three company strategies?
What information is needed to make decisions - what questions do the end-users have about strategies, OKRs and the work they're tied to?
- And who is making the decisions? Are they SPM users who have access to the workspaces and want to learn to use them? Or executives who want to just see a dashboard, or just be emailed a PowerPoint once in a while?

From there, with the building blocks of goals, strategies, strategic programs, strategic plans, initiatives, and any other similar data, plus workspaces and dashboards, you can create a solution that will align work with the strategies and OKRs and let people see and use it the way they need.