How to Manage Post-Project Sustain Costs

[Luis Ataide]

How to Manage Post-Project Sustain Costs

SAFE HARBOR / DISCLAIMER: This article describes a proposed solution to support this use case. 

The proposed solution requires configuration; as such, there is no liability for ServiceNow to provide support, apply changes, fix defects and review impact during future upgrades.

Customers are responsible for evaluating and deciding whether to implement this solution.

Use case: Identify the sustain/operational costs generated after the project is completed without impacting the project financial amounts and KPIs.

The proposed solution is described in the attached document.

[Namita Mishra]

This is another great article @Luis Ataide .

Thank You for taking out time and posting this.

Thank You!

Namita Mishra

[rashdown_online]

Hello, @Luis Ataide and thank you for this. It's really helpful and addresses (somewhat) a use case we have.

Might there be a "relatively simple" way to expand the use case to include the following?

As Demand Manager, I would like to plan for:

• Project costs (IS-only; includes support/licences, amongst other things to deliver a change),
• Post-project BaU costs (typically licenses/any BaU uplift; "Sustain Costs" fits the bill perfectly) and,
• "Business Costs" (cost that are "paid for" by the business" during and/or after project closure)

All these costs need to be "rolled up" for total investment view of RoI/NPV evaluation, in the "Finance" pane.

In our place, our approvers (we call DoA) only approve "Project Costs". But will only do so if the whole investment RoI is "attractive" (or it's a "must-do" informed by other measures).  Without the roll-up of all of the above 3x "buckets", it's not possible to do get that view.

Currently, to help distinguish between these 3x buckets, there is guidance to prefix a cost plan item name with either "BaU Cost - " or "Business Cost - ".  And when you're dealing with 100+ demand managers spread across the globe and who don't follow guidance, it's troublesome.

All demand costs should be transferred from the demand to the project when a project is created.

Thanks in advance for any pointers that I can pass on to our development team.

Cheers.

[Luis Ataide]

Fyi. Proposed solution updated to work with Project Workspace.