How risk, value and size are calculated in a Demand

[Marco Nappo_]

This article is about how the risk (score_risk), value(score_value) and size(score_size) are calculated in a Demand, if you are interested on how they are calculated in a Project please click on this article

In Demand / Portfolio Workbench the portfolio Manager can decide to approve a Demand depends on 3 specific scores:

1. Size (score_size field) is calculated from T-shirt Size (if you don't get exactly those values modify the min value of the size metric to be 0, see the bottom of the article)(*) :

2 if S

4 if M

6 if L

8 if XL

10 if XXL

2. Value (score_value field) is calculated as (*) 

a. Impact (60%)

1 if  3-Low

5 if 2-Medium

10 if 1-High

b. Financial Return (40%):

10 if Financial Return >$1M

9  if $750K< Financial Return < $1M

8  if $500K< Financial Return < $750K

6 if $250K< Financial Return <  $500K

4 if $100K< Financial Return < $250K

2 if $50< Financial Return <$100K

1 if $0< Financial Return <$50K

3. Risk(score_risk field) is assessed by stakeholders (1-10) (*) 

a. Time Delay (20%) Question: Is this susceptible to time delays?

b. Business Case (15%) Question:Does this fulfill a compliance & regulatory requirements?

c. Business Expansion (20%) Question: Does this require additional infrastructure or business expansion?

d. Commitment (20%) Question: Does this contain significant dependencies?

If you want to know more about the assessment process please read this article

Risk, Value and Size are used to calculate the Demand Score as described in this article

All the Metric types can be described in Assessments →  Metric definition → Types 

All the Metric Categories associated with all the Demands are described in the Demand Record (select Demand)

For each Metric Category we define 1 or more Assessment Metrics. 

Here you can find the description on how they are calculated and also modify them if needed. 

(*) All the metrics OOB have a scale of 1 - 10, but can be changed. To have the results as expected you should change the scale from 0 - 10, modifying the Min value from 1 to 0.

To download the related powerpoint please click here

[Geeky]

Value (score_value field) is calculated as

a. Impact (60%)

1 if  3-Low

5 if 2-Medium

10 if 1-High

b. Financial Return (40%):

10 if Financial Return >$750K

9  if $500K< Financial Return < $750K

8 if $250K< Financial Return <  $500K

6 if $100K< Financial Return < $250K

4 if $50< Financial Return <$100K

2 if $0< Financial Return <$50K

1 if Financial Return <= $0

Can you give me an example for this? Let say Impact is medium and returns is <$50K then what will be the score_value?

[Marco Nappo_]

Hi rini, 

OOB is score_value = 2.62

• Impact is medium ---> 5 (60%)
• Returns is <$50K --->  1 (40%)
• Scale is 1-10

I would suggest to change the scale that OOB is 1-10 for the metrics to be 0-10 as described in the article.

In this case it's easier to calculate as score_value = 3.4:

• Impact is medium ---> 5 (60%)
• Returns is <$50K --->  1 (40%)
• Scale is 0-10
• score_value = 5*0.6 + 1 * 0.4 = 3.4.

This are the correct value according to my updated notes, thanks for spot the mistake in it! 🙂

Cheers

[Geeky]

Thanks for providing the formula. It comes to the below matrix if I update the min to 0.

Any specific reason for asking to update the min to 0 instead of 1? What will be matrix values if I do not update the min value and keep it as is as 1

And for the Risk Score - You can considering only below values which makes it only 75%? From where does the rest of 25% comes from ? Not sure if my question is dumb but not able to understand why only 75% is considered here.

Time Delay (20%)
Business Case (15%)
Business Expansion (20%)
Commitment (20%)

Can you please give one example for this calculation of Risk?

[Geeky]

Hi Marcos - Did you get any chance to review my comment? Any update on this?

[Marco Nappo_]

Check my answer to rini, I copy it for your convenience:

OOB is score_value = 2.62

• Impact is medium ---> 5 (60%)
• Returns is <$50K --->  1 (40%)
• Scale is 1-10

I would suggest to change the scale that OOB is 1-10 for the metrics to be 0-10 as described in the article.

In this case it's easier to calculate as score_value = 3.4:

• Impact is medium ---> 5 (60%)
• Returns is <$50K --->  1 (40%)
• Scale is 0-10
• score_value = 5*0.6 + 1 * 0.4 = 3.4.

[Marco Nappo_]

Any specific reason for asking to update the min to 0 instead of 1?

Not really I think at first servicenow set all from 0 to 10 than they realized that 0 is not a nice number if it ended in the denumerator for any formula the customer might adjust to so they switched to 1-10 scale.

And for the Risk Score - You can considering only below values which makes it only 75%? From where does the rest of 25% comes from ?

Again there is not a particular reason why the total is 75% my guess is that Servicenow internally have another assessment that would make the total to 100% but they didn't want to share it with the customer for some reason, so instead of adjusting all of them to make total = 100% they simply removed the 5th one.

[Samir Zaveri2]

Hello Marco,

I would like to edit metric categories from 5 of them to just 3. And would like to calculate the score based on my requirements. What should be the best approach.

Currently, we have size, risk, ROI, strategic alignment and size. I would like to have only 3 categories on the assessment which would be only Strategic Alignment, Risk and Value.

Strategic Alignment: Weight will be 40%

- This will have 5 Assessment Metrics as Assessment and all the assessment metric have 1 to 5 value. Each question will hold a wight of 20% of 40%.

Risk: Weight will be 40%

- This will have 5 Assessment Metrics as Assessment and all the assessment metric have 1 to 5 value. Each question will hold a wight of 20% of 40%.

Value: Weight will be 20%

- This will have 2 Assessment Metrics as Assessment and all the assessment metric have 1 to 5 value. each question will hold a wight of 50% of 20%.

I was wondering if we can change the original calculation based on the above requirement and how would it impact while we upgrade to the next instance.

Appreciate your assistance.

[jeffrey bachyns]

Hello Samir,

Have you made any progress with this?

I am also a little confused why size would give a higher overall score. If anything a larger sized project would seem to be a negative because it takes up more needed resources. Am I missing something? Is there value in a larger size?

[Marco Nappo_]

Any specific reason for asking to update the min to 0 instead of 1?

Not really I think at first servicenow set all from 0 to 10 than they realized that 0 is not a nice number if it ended in the denumerator for any formula the customer might adjust to so they switched to 1-10 scale.

And for the Risk Score - You can considering only below values which makes it only 75%? From where does the rest of 25% comes from ?

Again there is not a particular reason why the total is 75% my guess is that Servicenow internally have another assessment that would make the total to 100% but they didn't want to share it with the customer for some reason, so instead of adjusting all of them to make total = 100% they simply removed the 5th one.

[Marco Nappo_]

Best practice is to never change Servicenow stuff, especially if we are talking about script.

You can duplicate the existing assessments, deactivate them and then rename the duplicated assessment and modify them. This would be a better approach other than delete or modifying the existing ones.

Let me know if this was helpful.

Cheers

[Marco Nappo_]

Score is calculated as [Size + Value + (10-Risk)]/ 3. If you are not happy about that you can modify how is calculated with no problem, check my article about that: How Demand Score and Project Score are calculated

Follow best practices if you don't want this modification to have impact on future SN upgrades

Please mark helpful if you find this answer helpful

Cheers

[Mohammed Kemal]

Hello Marco -

I am using the baseline demand assessment but the strategic alignment score is not calculating. The other scores like risk, Value, and Score do calculate after the assessment completed. But the Strategic Alignment is not? 

I have checked by watching the field and doesn't give me that much information:

also chekced the OOB BR:

Where should I have to check that the OOB score for demand assessment is working particularly for "score_strategic_alignment"?

Best,

Mohammed!!

[rohit2926]

where is the remaining 25% calculated from the Risk score ?