"So, any tips for actually implementing this thing?"
"How do I get more people to use our dashboards?"
"Do I need a team of admins for this analytics tool?"
"Must I really understand the whole platform just to make a report?"
I get these kinds of questions a lot, and its very appropriate. After we've seen the vision of a product like this (really ServiceNow in general, not just Performance Analytics) our natural thought goes to the daily care and feeding of our new technology baby. I wanted to get the thoughts brewing about in my head on this concept down onto some virtual paper, hence the purpose for this post. Now, I've worked on more ServiceNow implementations than just PA over the last four years and so some of the advice I note in this missive could apply to the rest of our product suite.
Divide and Conquer
The first thing I wanted to cover was people. Configuring a solution is easy compared to the hurdles one must jump through just to get a few hours a week from a ServiceNow administrator - especially when its not their day job. If you were wondering if it was common to be a ServiceNow admin and have other responsibilities, it is. You're not alone being stretched thin. Don't worry though, as an admin you're perfectly suited to the part of Performance Analytics that gets to hum away without you having to poke and prod it regularly.
Ok, where am I going with that? There are two different "positions" or "roles" when it comes to implementing and maintaining Performance Analytics. One would be in charge of collecting data, and scheduling the collection of data. I'll go into this some more in a moment. The other would be more akin to a business analyst role, in charge of designing effective sets of information for the purpose of continual service improvement.
Lets begin with a bit more information on this first character, we'll call her the "Data Collector". If you've ever been an administrator for a ServiceNow instance, then this job will feel easy to you. Want a new breakdown? Its the same type of work/platform understanding as someone who wishes to create a new field on a form. Want a new indicator? Well, have you ever built a link in the left-hand navigation for your instance? Or created a report of operational information? You're all set. It sounds like I'm skimming over things but all that's needed for this role is an understanding of the table and the fields on those tables. Bonus points if you were a part of the development of the process you're measuring with Performance Analytics.
This second role is a bit of a misnomer to be fair, since it doesn't have to be a single person. For simplicity we'll describe this role as "People who speak to the business and understand their needs"... Ok, lets try again: "Performance Analyst" works. Its really about taking a process and determining how we can support initiatives to improve it with data. This is all about Continual Service Improvement (yes, this is a nod to the ITIL folks in the room). Since we've isolated the nitty-gritty of collecting data, the Performance Analyst could be a different individual for each Service we're measuring. Knowing the process you're improving in this capacity is more important than what fields are on the table this process relies on.
To be succinct for a moment, your PA "team" should consist of:
- A small group of one or more individuals who understand the ServiceNow platform, and how data is structured.
- A scalable group of people who can understand what goals we're striving toward in the first place, aligning them to data in the platform.
As a segue to my next topic, imagine the Data Collector to be that friend who organized her Legos really well. All the bins organized by color and shape, not tossed into one big bucket. Even those special pieces had their own home (like those little elbow pieces with the hinge...you know what I mean). The Process Analyst would be those of us that always wanted to built the expansive dioramas or the complicated Millennium Falcon - because they were cool! (read: had value.) These two concepts work in concert to keep quality high, maintenance low, and alignment tight of your dashboards.
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