Guide overview
Here’s an overview of the topics we’ll cover in the guide:
- Familiarizing yourself with SPM
- Deciding on business outcomes
- Charting your implementation path
- Working with ServiceNow experts
- Choosing self-implementation
- Preparing for organization change
- Resources to bookmark
Start by familiarizing yourself with Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM).
SPM offers a Standard, Professional (Pro), and Professional (Pro) Plus
SPM comes with many applications that let you transform how your organization delivers strategic business and IT outcomes. But don’t worry! You don’t have to implement everything at once. Below are some of the key SPM applications to focus on first:
Strategic Planning Workspace (SPW) (video overview)
Help executives, product and portfolio managers drive organizational alignment while navigating the challenges of Agile and Product transformations. This includes portfolio planning with hybrid work items, goal management, eight out-of-the box lenses and custom lenses, epic financials, hybrid capacity planning, feedback, and enterprise agile planning (eap) (product documentation) (configuration guide)
Goal Framework and Goal Framework for SPM (video overview)
Help executives, strategists, portfolio, and product owners define their objectives and targets, align them to business strategy, and plan work to drive to those objectives (product documentation)
Optimize achievement of customer expectations and satisfaction of your products with Feedback. Feedback is a customer-centric solution enabling sharing of experiences & improvement ideas of your products, as well as help you align investments into products to provide the most value to your customers. (Product Documentation) (SPM Blog on Product Feedback)
Demand Management
Centralize requests across the enterprise and streamline the investment process for new products, services, repairs, and enhancements (product page) (product documentation)
Portfolio Project Management (PPM)
Enable portfolio managers to align work to goals and strategy to ensure you work on the right projects (product page) (product documentation)
Enterprise Agile Planning (EAP) (included in SPM Professional)
Manage a successful agile transform journey by accelerating delivery and time to value with Enterprise Agile Planning. (Enterprise Agile Planning product page) (5-minute demo of EAP)
Empower cross-functional teams to collaborate and manage work in their own digital spaces. Enable flexible task management and real-time notebooks through Collaborative Work Management. (Product Documentation) (Automating CWM Access Requests)
Now Assist for SPM (Generative AI) (available with SPM Pro-Plus)
Accelerate analysis and enable smarter decision making through summarized feedback with Now Assist.
Enable AI-assisted business case creation and accelerated Demand cycle time with GenAI for SPM.
Watch this 30-minute video to learn about the GenAI capabilities offered by SPM Pro+.
If you are new to ServiceNow, we recommend this very short Welcome to ServiceNow course to learn the platform basics. For a deeper dive into the Now Platform, a longer ServiceNow Fundamentals On Demand and/or Instructor Led course is also available.
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SPM Standard applications include:
- Innovation Management
- Demand Management
- Portfolio Project Management (PPM) includes Financial Planning for PPM
- Resource Management (New RM Workspace)
- Portfolio Planning (Portfolio Planning Workspace) includes Goal Framework
- Agile Development (Agile Team only)
- Test Management (Agile Team only)
- Collaborative Work Management
- Cost Management
- Platform Analytics
- Digital Portfolio Management
- Additional Feature: Data Separation
SPM Professional (Pro) adds:
- Strategic Planning (Strategic Planning Workspace) includes Goal Framework for SPM, Feedback, Enterprise Agile Planning (EAP), and Hybrid Resource Capacity Planning)
- Agile Development (Scrum Programs for Agile 2.0)
- Hybrid Project Management
- Investment Funding
- Predictive Intelligence
- Virtual Agent
SPM Professional (Pro) Plus also adds
- Now Assist for Strategic Portfolio Management including story generation, feedback summarization, email project summary, AI agents and more!
Separate licensing is also available for:
- Agile Team
- Time Card User v2
- Business Stakeholder v3
- Process Mining (Demand Management)
- Enterprise Architecture
Roles & Personas (Stakeholders):
- Strategy Realization Officer (SRO)/Transformation/Agile/ Executive Leader
- Portfolio/Program/Product Manager/User
- Demand/Project/Business Relationship Manager/User
- Resource Manager/User
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Identify your desired business outcomes
SPM empowers your organization to deliver on your strategy. But before you explore all of the features of the solution, you need to ensure you are planning your strategic priorities and investments to the needs of your business.
Our SPM overview page helps you translate those concepts into action, while the infographic helps you create a business aligned PMO to support those endeavors. We also have our own proven methodology, Now Value, to help you envision, create, validate, and champion value and realize success with ServiceNow.
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If you have chosen to work with a ServiceNow partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for your implementation, it’s important to clearly communicate the business outcomes you want to achieve and agree on a well-structured roadmap to attain these goals. If you need guidance on successfully engaging with an implementation partner, our Develop your ServiceNow Partner Strategy workbook is an excellent starting point.
To accelerate time to value and reduce risk, make sure that your partner uses Now Create, ServiceNow’s library of more than 700 leading implementation practices. We also recommend you use Now Create if you are self-implementing, as it provides a wealth of assets designed to guide you to success.
If you want to work with a partner but haven’t selected one yet, check out our Partner Finder.
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For customers who have purchased ServiceNow Impact, you will have access to experts and resources to guide you through your implementation of SPM, track and measure outcomes, and help you get to value quickly. If you do not have a paid ServiceNow Impact package, consider how dedicated ServiceNow experts, premium support, a personalized digital experience, and training for your team can help you accelerate your ROI. Read more here.
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Self Implementation
Build your team’s skills
If you are planning to self-implement, you need to give your platform team the skills they need to succeed. The best way of doing this is to become a certified ServiceNow professional. We offer several certification paths for different roles in your team. Check out the links below:
Join the SPM community
Visit the ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management community. You’ll find best practices and other useful resources, and it’s also a great place to talk to ServiceNow experts, get your questions answered, and connect with other community members. Be sure to subscribe to get key updates.
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Understand ServiceNow releases and upgrades
If you’re not already on the latest ServiceNow release, we strongly recommend that you upgrade before you go live with SPM. By upgrading, you get new ServiceNow innovations into the hands of your users faster, get access to the latest performance and security enhancements, and ensure that support is there when you need it. To make your upgrade smooth and successful, take a look at these upgrade resources.
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Prepare for organizational change
To successfully deploy SPM, you need your business to understand and use SPM, and to recognize its benefits. With many different stakeholder groups, it is essential to ensure everyone understands the benefits for them, and how to get the most value out of the system.
The ServiceNow Organizational Change Management guide provides detailed guidance on how to plan for organizational change. If you need help creating a winning communications plan, this communications plan template also provides useful advice.
Please also check our Capability Map (attached) to learn more on what processes are supported by SPM.
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The following courses are a great starting point for your user groups:
And the following content will help you develop and implement best practices:
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