Step by Step guide to configure Alignment Planner Workspace (APW)

[Rajesh_Singh]

Dear Community members,

I'm back with my new article on - Step by Step guide to configure Alignment Planner Workspace (APW)

We often notice project fail or do not achieve expected business outcome, because of poor planning & Lack of proper tools. APW helps you to align, plan & deliver expected business outcome.

key APW terms: 

Planning hierarchy : A Configurable framework of levels used to organize business process.

Planning nodes : Node defined at each level of Planning hierarchy

Planning organizations : Planning organizations are responsible for planning activities at distinct levels in your organization—enterprise, portfolios, business units, departments, or divisions.

Planning items : Planning item refers to the type of work item that different planning organizations use

Conceptual representation of APW terms:

• Items marked in Red are Planning hierarchy
• Items marked in Green are Planning nodes
• Items marked in Blue are Planning organizations
• Items marked in Black are Planning items

Planning Hierarchy in detail:

Below is screenshot from ServiceNow, shows simple structure of Planning hierarchy you get in out of box with APM.

Understanding APW terms on ServiceNow UI

Lets understand Where you can locate Planning items, organizations, Hierarchies in ServiceNow UI

Planning hierarchy and Planning Nodes

Planning organisations

Understanding APW terms on workspace

Lets understand Where you can locate Planning items, organizations, Hierarchies in ServiceNow Workspace UI

Core Setup :

• Install Plugins : Install following APW plugins (Please ensure PPM & Agile 2.0/Safe plugins are already installed)
  • Alignment Planner workspace (Id:sn_align_ws)
  • Alignment Planner Workspace integrations for PPM and Agile 2.0 (Id:sn_align_snow_int)
    

• Define Goals : Executive leader define goals which indicates vision. Leader can define goals at "Goal Framework" and set targets against each goal to ensure you able to track timely accomplishments of goals. Goals can be defined at
  • Navigate to All > Enterprise Goal Management > Goals
    
  • You can also migrate the existing goals data to the Goal Framework tables by running the scheduled job.
    
    • Navigate to All > System Definition > Scheduled Jobs.
    • Search for and click the "Migrating Goal, Strategy, and related Work Item data to the new tables scheduled job"
    • Execute the job

• Define planning hierarchy:  Here you have two options - Either choose existing templates to create planning hierarchy or create custom planning hierarchy based on customer requirements.
  • If you want to use existing templates to create planning hierarchy then you can simple go to
    • Navigate to All > Alignment Planner workspace > Planning hierarchy
    • Create 'New' record , on New record form - select required planning hierarchy under Related links.
       
      
       
      • If you want to create custom planning hierarchy, then you can go as
        • Navigate to All > Alignment Planner workspace > Planning hierarchy
        • Create 'New' record , fill the Name of planning hierarchy methodology, then submit
        • Once record is saved, define nodes at related list by clicking on 'New' button shown in below screenshot

Planning Hierarchy with nodes. Each related record in Planning hierarchy is Planning node

• Define planning items:  After planning hierarchy, you need to define planning items.
  • If your using out of box planning hierarchy, then most of plannings items is already defined in servicenow
    • However if your creating custom planning hierarchy, then in that case you can either use exisiting out of box planning items or create custom planning items
      

• Define planning organisations: Now its time to define Planning organisations
  • • Planning hierarchy is key component to define planning organisations
      

Data mapping:

• Importing PPM data in to APW : Once core configuration is done, we need to do data mapping between PPM & APW. The high-level workflow of the APW integration with PPM and Agile Development 2.0 solution is as follows:
• • Create an alignment integration record inside your planning hierarchy.
  • Create a table map is to map a table in Alignment Planner Workspace with a table in PPM or Agile Dev....
  • Create a field map to map fields inside the tables.
  • Create a choice map to map the choice list for each field map for fields with a list of values.
  • Create an import request to import the required PPM or Agile records to Alignment Planner Workspace ...
  • View error logs to troubleshoot any issue that might occur during the integration process.

 

and there your done!

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Key Roles : 

Executive Leader - To setup and define goals
Product/portfolio Manager - To align goal to product/portfolio, Create initiatives
Demand Manager - Break initiatives in to small work items - projects/demands/epics/features, capture scope, cost, resource for better execution
Development team - APW is just "FYI" for the developers to know how tehir work is directly impacting and helping organisation to achieve goals

Tables Structure : 

 

Thank you!
Rajesh Singh

[PaulaaO]

Thank you very much for this article @Rajesh Singh - that is very useful. APW is actually a feature we are currently scoping out and plan to implement in the near future.

I tried to carry out an impact analysis post installation to understand if there will be a clash with the current built, but then noticed how many items gets installed/updated, etc. so I am currently trying to prep for any unforeseen scenarios.

We have some customisation on our pm_project table and was wondering if you could advise whether from experience you know about any issues/clashes once APW and its dependent plugins get installed. I plan to run some ATFs to ensure current functionality is not impacted, but would that be enough?

Any input around potential concerns/elements to be aware of would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Paula

[hslau]

Thank you for the invaluable article @Rajesh singh .

I have a question about the import request that is created after using the "IMPORT" button.  I've created several requests form this on the sn_align_cmn_int_import_request table, and the state is Requested, but I don't see any documentation indicating what is supposed to happen next. Does someone receive an approval or is a scheduled job to run to actually import or sync planning items?

Thank you.
Helen

[PaulaaO]

@hslau - from what I have seen, after a while the state will change from Requested to Completed and you might get some integration errors as well (which I haven't had the chance to look into them so unsure at this stage what we are supposed to do with them).

[PaulaaO]

Hi @Rajesh_Singh - would you be able to advise what is the difference between Goals and Core goals and how should they be used? The reason I ask is that we would like to have a super user who could amend the existent goals, targets, strategic plans and strategic priorities and the behaviour we observed is that we wish to create a target from the Targets module and associate it with a goal, the Goal field from target form takes us to Core Goals table and unless the creator of the target record is also creator of the core goals they cannot see other existent records to choose from. Thank you

[Mike_Saunders]

@Rajesh_Singh I was wondering, is there any particular impact to a project when importing it from the pm_project table the sn_align_core_project table? 

Does it change how the project behaves/executes?

[Fuki]

@Rajesh_Singh  Do we have an update article for SPW?