The usage of "Product" and "Epic" and "Themes in ServiceNow

[kathymorris]

Hi All,

We are trying to get an understanding of how "Products" are defined in ServiceNow, the purpose and usage. We have found very little documentation. Before setting Products up in ServiceNow, we would like to understand it better. Before building the wrong model and it propagates across our other ServiceNow modules. Can anyone shed light on this? 

We are setting up the Epic / Themes also.

Our understanding is:

Product: represents items under development (new applications/features)

Epics: are going to have many stories

Themes: are associated with business value, to keep track of organizational goals

Thanks,

Kathy

[Rachel Gomez]

Your understanding is mostly correct. In ServiceNow, a "Product" is a term used to represent a software product or a service offering. It could be a specific application or a suite of applications that the organization provides.

Epics, on the other hand, are large bodies of work that can be broken down into smaller, more manageable units called stories. Epics are typically used to represent significant features or enhancements to a product.

Themes are higher-level concepts that align with an organization's strategic goals or initiatives. Themes help to group Epics together and provide context to the work being done.

In summary, Products represent the software or service offerings provided by an organization, Epics represent significant features or enhancements to a product, and Themes align with an organization's strategic goals or initiatives.

Regards,

Rachel Gomez

[Ben Schlick]

I've found it's better to arrange products -> themes -> epics -> stories. How an organization defines its products *is* dependent on how their supporting organizational structure and roles/responsibilities are assigned.

If the ServiceNow team were centrally located in one organizational group, the product hierarchy would look like this.

Product = ITSM Platform (encompases the ITIL definition of ITSM, not ServiceNows ITSM application which contains Incident, Problem, Change, etc.)

Theme = Governance

-Epic=Governance Board

--Story=Define Stakeholders and SMEs

--Story=Document ServiceNow Governance

-Epic=CSDM

-Epic=System Upgrades

Theme = ITOM

-Epic=Discovery

-Epic=Service Mapping

-Epic=Event Management

-Epic=Cloud Prov & Gov.

Theme = CMDB

-Epic=Health Scorecard

-Epic=Custom Tables

-Epic=Managed Classes

-Epic=Data Certification

If your ServiceNow team(s) is split across the organization, your product model may look different. This assumes that the platform team, and subsequent application teams are separate.

Product = ServiceNow Platform

Theme = Development

Theme = Upgrades

Theme = Custom Applications

The ServiceNow applications that are separated across the organization would classify their applications as Products and manage them as such.

Product = ITSM

Theme = Incident

Theme = Problem

Theme = Change

Theme = Service Catalog

p.s. this isn't where i parked my car

[Ben Schlick]

As we can see, work gets categorized according to the organizational structure that is defined to support it. Once themes are broken down into epics, and epics contain MANY stories. The stories provide a detailed breakdown of the work and effort required to complete each task. The automated function/dependency between the/any Agile product and the Project Portfolio Management reside in each Story. There are attributes *Project and *Project Phase when correctly filled for each story automatically create an associate project task in PPM. voila

[Prasanna_Patil]

Hi @kathymorris check if this vide helps you

https://youtu.be/P3CzXprnFno?si=tWLYap_GtUaDtxFP

[Justin Schulz]

My question is how do I make work visible on a product level? I do not currently have SPM until next year and that sounds like a great solution.