Introduction
Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) in ServiceNow provides organizations with a unified platform to align strategy with execution.
The ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) functional data model centers on the "Plan Item" table, which acts as the foundational entity for strategic and work-related items. This unified Plan Item approach provides a flexible and configurable data structure, enabling organizations to define hierarchies and relationships that represent both strategic and operational portfolios, and to plan and track work effectively.
This article provides the functional data model of Plan Item and its related entities, which enables organizations to plan strategically, manage intake efficiently, and execute work effectively using SPM.
Note: This functional model is current as of March 2026
The Core Table: Plan Item
The foundation of the ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) functional model is the Plan Item. It serves as the core table from which all major entities within SPM are derived.
Entities Derived from the Plan Item:
Strategic Items:
- Initiative
- Capability
- Strategic Program
- Strategic Portfolio
Intake Items:
- Demand Planning Item (synchronized with dmn_demand)
- Product Idea
Execution Work Items:
- Project Planning Item (synchronized with pm_project)
- Epic Planning Item
- CWM Board Planning Item
One of the key strengths of this model is its extensibility. Organizations can extend the Plan Item table to create additional entities tailored to their specific planning or work-tracking requirements.
Strategic Items: Defining Your Organization's Direction
Strategic Items represent the high-level planning elements that define and organize work across your enterprise. These include capabilities, initiatives, strategic programs, value streams, and organizational structures like portfolios and business areas.
You can also enable Strategic Items for Roadmap Planning to support long-term planning and alignment before breaking down work into detailed plans.
Building Your Strategic and Organization Hierarchy
The Alignment Lens (sn_align_core_lens) allows you to create hierarchies among plan items.This flexibility is crucial—organizations can structure their hierarchies and specific needs to plan and track the execution rather than being constrained by a rigid Out of Box Lenses.
Hierarchy enables you to:
- Perform high-level planning: Build initiative roadmaps before detailed execution
- Link execution to strategy: Connect projects, demands, or epics to strategic or organization items for comprehensive planning and tracking. Helps to view work from Various lenses
- Track the execution: Monitor progress and performance of work connected to strategic items
Enterprise Goals
Strategic Planning Workspace provides Goal Framework for organizations to define their Enterprise Goals(sn_gf_goal). These Goals can be associated to any Owning Entity, which can be any Plan Item Table(Organization or Strategic Tables) as desired by organization.
The Goal Framework also incorporates Targets (sn_gf_goal_target), which define measurable outcomes with their own assigned entities for clear progress tracking
Aligning Work with Goals
Strategic alignment is achieved through direct linkage execution plan items to organizational goals. These Plan items contribute to attainment of the Goals.
How
- Plan Item has a reference to a Goal (sn_gf_goal), allowing organizations to assign a primary goal. These intake and execution plan items fulfill the goal.
- In scenarios where multiple work items needs to be associated to the goal, the Goal Relationship (sn_gf_goal_m2m_relationship) table helps in the association.
Capacity and Financial Planning
Once strategy is defined and prioritized, organizations must assess whether they have the resources—people, skills, and funding—to execute the strategy effectively.This is where capacity and financial planning on the execution items helps to prioritize and roadmap it based on resources and/or funding availability.
Capacity Planning:
Helps in Demand vs. Capacity Analysis of Resources. Analyze resource requirements against available capacity across configured groups, roles, skills or any configured resource attributes as defined by Organization to decide which work item can be executed in what time frame.
Below Tables are essential for performing demand-versus-capacity analysis.
- CPAAM Capacity Table: Maintains baseline capacity for resources across defined time periods, derived from user schedules, availability rules, and organizational calendars.
Generate Capacity Module in SPW: Automates capacity record creation by pulling data from user schedules, holidays, and availability configurations. Organizations typically schedule this job periodically or trigger it after major changes.
- CPAAM Effort Table: Stores monthly aggregated effort based on attributes like role, skill, or group
Financial Planning with Investment Objects
The Investment Object serves as the financial core table, containing all financial data for plan items. It consists of three key components:
- Cost Plan and Breakdown: Defines estimated and actual costs, with breakdowns by expense type, fiscal period, or cost type for detailed financial planning.
- Benefit Plan and Breakdown: Captures expected and realized benefits, providing visibility into benefit categories, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
- Funding (Budget) Breakdown: Represents funding sources allocated to investments, tracking by source, fiscal period, or funding type.
These financial components are shared between strategic planning items and actual execution items, ensuring consistency across the planning and execution lifecycle.
Intake Work Items: Managing Ideas and Demands
Demands
SPM maintains two objects for demands: Core Demand object - dmn_demand and Demand roadmapping Object -sn_align_core_demand.
sn_align_core_demand is purely used for only roadmap planning and tracking purposes in SPW to show alongside of other planning items, this is bidirectionally sync with dmd_demand.
For all other purposes of Demand Intake, Demand Assessment, Demand approvals, Conversion Core Demand object -dmn_demand is used.
Demand (dmd_demand) are synchronized with their respective Demand Planning Items. The Alignment Integration (sn_align_cmn_int_integrations_setup) ensures key columns sync between planning and execution layers.
Demands can be converted to various execution work items, providing flexibility in how organizations move from intake to delivery.
Product Ideas and Feedback
The Feedback application (sn_align_core_feedback) simplifies gathering and analyzing user feedback. Product Ideas (sn_align_core_product_idea) can be created and linked with other feedback, planning items, or non-planning items through the Feedback Relation many-to-many table.
Execution Work Items: Getting Work Done
Projects:
SPM maintains two objects for Projects: - Core Project Execution object - pm_project and Project Roadmapping Object -sn_align_core_project.
sn_align_core_project is purely used for only roadmap planning and tracking purposes in SPW to show alongside of other planning items, this is bidirectionally sync with pm_project.
For all other Project execution, Projects (pm_project) are actual execution items used in project workspace.
Projects (pm_project) are synchronized with their respective Project Planning Items. The Alignment Integration (sn_align_cmn_int_integrations_setup) ensures key columns sync between planning and execution layers.
Key Project-Related Entities:
- Project Task (pm_project_task): Individual units of work, including milestones
- Requirements (dmn_requirement): Stores project or demand requirements
- Story (rm_story): Captures user stories for agile project management
- Status Report (project_status): Time-based snapshots of project health
- Baseline and Baseline Item: Captures project and task dates for variance analysis
- RIDAC: Framework for tracking Risks, Issues, Decisions, Actions, and Changes
- Project Financials: Project is associated to Investment Object which has Cost Plans, Benefit Plans and Budget
- Project Resources: Project Resources are managed through Resource Assignments
Resource Assignments
Resource Planning ensures the right resources—people, roles, groups, skills, or attributes—are available and optimally assigned to work.
Resource Assignments: Requests for roles, groups, users, or other resource planning attributes. This is a shared model between plan items and actual items.
Resource Allocations: The actual assignment of people or groups to fulfill resource assignments. When allocated, the system creates:
- Resource Allocation Dailies: Daily-level allocation tracking
- Resource Aggregate Weekly: Weekly consolidated views
- Resource Aggregate Monthly: Monthly high-level analysis
This multi-granularity approach supports operational, tactical, and strategic decision-making.
Labor and Non-Labor Cost Plans
Labor Cost Plans define planned financial costs for labor resources based on rate cards, roles, and allocated hours. These are automatically created from resource assignments.
Non-Labor Cost Plans encompass expenses unrelated to human resources, such as hardware, software, and travel, typically entered manually.
Timecards and Actuals
Time tracking integrates with resource planning to maintain consistency between allocated effort, actual work, and financial impact:
- Users submit Timecards (time_card) against assigned tasks
- Each timecard references the corresponding Resource Assignment
- When processed, timecards generate Expense Lines (fm_expense_line)
- Expense lines update actuals in corresponding Cost Plans which rolls up the data to project
Benefit Plan Actuals can also be reported directly from breakdown details within benefit plans.
Enterprise Agile Planning (EAP)
SPM's Plan Item structure inherently supports flexible Agile execution. Organizations can configure their Team Hierarchy for Enterprise Agile planning by setting team levels and specific work item types.
Key EAP Concepts
Agile Entities: Epic, Capabilities, Features, and Stories extend the Plan Item model
Team Hierarchies: Teams organized hierarchically with one or more plan items/agile entities mapped
Planning Calendars: Each team type follows a planning calendar (ARTs use Planning Intervals, Agile teams use sprints)
Jira Integration: Bidirectional sync enables work planned in EAP to be executed in Jira, with automatic updates reflected in both systems
Collaborative Work Management (CWM)
CWM provides a central hub to plan, visualize, manage, and collaborate on work without switching between multiple tools.
Core CWM Entities
- CWM Space (sn_cwm_space): Collaborative workspace containing boards, tasks, and documents
- CWM Board (sn_cwm_board): Visual board for tracking work items (also a Planning execution item)
- CWM Task (sn_cwm_task): Individual work items managed on boards
- CWM Doc (sn_cwm_doc): Documentation associated with spaces or boards
- CWM Sprint (sn_cwm_sprint): Time-boxed iterations for agile management
Team Agile in CWM
CWM Boards handle team-level Agile management, including sprints and backlog management. The "connect work into board" feature can unify backlogs by bringing in various task work.
EAP Integration: When an EAP Agile team connects with CWM, a Space and Board are automatically created, with assigned stories brought in as connected work. EAP Sprints and CWM Sprints remain synchronized.
Resources
For more detailed information on implementing and configuring SPM, visit:
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