Kelly's SN implementation Blog Post #13

[kellykaufmann]

Kelly's SN implementation Blog Post #13

OK I've taken a long break from blogging…. I got pregnant (woohoo!) and the first trimester was rough. So my apologies for the delay, but I'm back (watch out!)! I'll try to remember everything that took place since my last blog post...

As a refresher, Phase 2 is focused on setting up Project & SDLC. We held all of our Project & SDLC requirement sessions (see last blog post for breakdown of these sessions). We brought screenshots of all the screens for Project & SDLC (Enhancement form, Story form, Scrum Task form, etc.) We had to re-initiate Change discussions (phase 3) with our SDLC team because we were figuring out where communications between the tester & development team will be. We also had to figure out who would create the Change task. Our Agile team decided to use the Change form for this discussion / history.

For SDLC, during a good collaborative brainstorming session that required mapping out some sample Agile projects we have right now, we identified what our 'Product' will be, although for us it's just an administrative extra step in our process. Our Scrum Master is rightfully not very happy right now about this extra administrative activity.

We were also trying to figure out how to have our burndown chart based on hours vs points. And figure out where the 'Actual' Burndown values in the Burn Down Chart pull from. Does it pull from the values in 'A' (Actual) on the story card in the Task Progress Board? Does it pull from 'Actual Hours' on the Scrum Task form? (Are these the same #)? After discussions with some helpful ServiceNow PPM employees, we found that the Sprint Burndown Chart pulls from the 'Story Points' field on the Sprint form. The chart pulls when the Sprint is NOT in 'Draft' or 'Planning' state. A new plotting point is plotted on the Burndown Chart whenever stories (and therefore Story Points) are added or removed. This 'Story Points' field pulls from the 'Points' field on the Story forms for all stories within that sprint. I don't think we currently have Stories pulling from points at the Scrum Task level. But I believe we're tracking remaining points/hours at the Scrum Task Level.   If that is the case, since we can't change the Burn Down Chart but we CAN change the functionality of the fields it pulls from, we will create a Business Rule to pull 'Remaining Hours' value on the Scrum Task form into the 'Points' field on the Story form. So a Story will pull the 'Remaining Hours' of all the Scrum Tasks related to it, which will roll up into the Scrum. We're going to have our Internal SN Admin work on this while AOS focuses on our existing requirements.

For Project, it was really hard for me to figure out how cost estimates & actual cost rollups happen. What is out of the box, what do we need to enable, what fields pull what fields & rollup, etc. Here's what I found / how we ended up getting it set up:

Cost estimates related to a project task:

On Project Tasks, when you enter in a $ amount into the 'Estimated Cost' field & click 'Submit', this will be incorporated into the 'Estimated cost' field on our 'Costs' tab on the Project form.

Cost estimates related to a requirement:

• On a requirement, when you enter in a $ amount into the 'Estimated Cost' field & click 'Submit', this will be incorporated into the 'Estimated cost' field on our 'Costs' tab on the Project form.
• If you create a task off a requirement and include a $ amount in the 'Estimated cost' field & click 'Submit', this will override the value in the 'Estimated cost' field for that requirement, and will also be incorporated into the 'Estimated cost' field in the 'Costs' tab of the main project form.

Cost actuals: Actual costs are captured by creating Expense Lines for that project.

To create cost actuals for a project, you navigate to the 'Expense Lines' tab, create a new expense line including a $ amount in the 'Amount' field & click 'Submit'. This will be incorporated into the 'Actual cost' field on the 'Costs' tab on the Project form.

For our Costs tab, we are setting up several sections:

• Original Approved costs: This pulls from the Demand and is locked for editing.
• Estimated Costs & Actual Costs: This comes from above.

Eventually we will have a 'Baselined Costs' section, and a 'Final Costs at Closeout' section. Baby steps though!

We prioritized our requirements, identified what will be done this phase vs later, identified what can be done by our Internal Admin vs not so we could have our Internal Admin do some of these.

Below are our Project requirements:

#	Priority	Could our internal SN Admin do?	Plan:	Requirement
P01	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Show related records (e.g. DMND###)
P04	High	No	Scheduling functionality - Do later	Give Project Managers ability to create schedules for tasks to happen on non-work days.
P06	Low	No	Do later	Add portfolio   for each 'IT Project Type'
P07	Low	No	Do later	Create GANTT chart for each project type & business area
P08	High	Maybe	AOS do Phase 2	Enable Issue tab, set up standard columns for everyone. Columns in this exact order: ID, Description, Date Entered, Status, Priority, Submitter, Owner, Target Resolution Date, Updates, Notes, Date Completed, Resolution. Priority options: 1-Low, 2-Medium, 3-High
P09	High	Maybe	AOS do Phase 2	Enable Risk tab, tweak risk form, set up standard columns for everyone. Columns in this exact order: ID, Risk Title, Date Entered, Status, If/Then Statement, Management Plan, Probability, Impact, Notes. These fields need to appear on the risk form. Probability options: 1-Low, 2-Medium, 3-High Impact options: 1-Low, 2-Medium, 3-High
P10	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Enable Requirements within Project in SN, ability to create tasks tied to a requirement.
P11	Low	No	Do later	Add functionality for signing off on project charter by requester & Business Lead.   E.g. button to send the project charter tab content to the sponsor with a button for approval, ability to see that it has been signed off on.
P12	Low	Yes	Do later	Add 'project health' indicator in project header. Colors = Red, yellow, green, and blank.
P13	Medium	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Add 'project phase' field and 'waterfall project execution subphase' field to the Project form. Project phase dropdown options: Discovery/Planning, Execution, Monitoring & Support, Phase N/A. Waterfall project execution subphase dropdown options = Requirement, Design, Development, Testing/QA, Go-Live, Subphase N/A
P14	Medium	No	AOS do Phase 2	Enable cost tasks, have them roll up into 'current costs' section in the 'Costs' tab
P15	Low	No	Do later	Add functionality for approval of Requirements by Business Lead.
P17	Low	No	Do later	Planned start date & planned end date - don't have time display on the date field, change date structure to be standard mm-dd-yyyy. Have time default to 12:01am & not display the time on the form.
P18	Low	No	Do later	When predecessor task has a state change to 'closed', change successor task state to 'Open'.
P19	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Turn on Defect functionality for a testing task, and testing tasks for defects
P20	Low	Maybe	Do later	Ability to tie a project to an incident
P21	Medium	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Enable Decision log
P22	Low		Do later	Approval to go live by the Business Lead.
P23	Low		Do later	Approval to close the project by Business Lead.
P24	Medium	No	AOS do Phase 2	Provide ability to add/access attachments for project task accessed from GANTT view.
P26	Medium	Maybe	AOS do Phase 2	When creating an issue, have 'created' date default to today's date, but editable. Have 'created by' field be greyed out.
P27	Medium	Maybe	AOS do Phase 2	Risk - make the title & if/then statement required.   Have 'created' date default to today's date, but editable. Have 'created by' field greyed out.
	Medium	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Don't use the built-in project start & end date, which ties to tasks. Replace these fields on the Project form with two new fields: Projected Start Date, Projected End Date. Pull this over from Demand.
	Medium	Yes	Internal Admin do	Set up traceability from a Project Task to the parent on the Project Task form.
	Medium	Yes	Internal Admin do	Ability to log time against a Defect

Below are our SDLC requirements:

#	Priority	Could our internal SN Admin do?	Plan:	Requirement
S02	High	No	AOS do Phase 2	Enable time reporting for working in SDLC. Log time at the enhancement level and the task level. Add the timecard to the scrum task. Show actual hours spent to date in the task.
S06	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Enable defect logging against a story or task.
S07	High	Maybe	AOS do Phase 2	In Scrum task, enable 'Work notes list' and 'watch list'.
S09	Medium	No	AOS do Phase 2	Task Progress Board card changes: - Display the 'DST' field on the task cards. - Add 'Story ID' (order field) to story
S14	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Enhancement form: - Add 'Default Team' field, rename to 'Team'. Have the following fields carried over from Demand to Enhancement & displayed on the Enhancement form: - Design Notes - FS Rep - Requester - IT Teams - Region - Turnover Request # - Requested Completion Date
S15	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Story form field changes: - Remove Configuration Item - Make 'Short Description' field required (currently is optional) - Add 'Story ID' field - Add large text box field titled 'Story notes' in the 'Notes' tab
S16	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Task form field changes: - Add short text field 'DST'. Optional. - Make 'Short Description' field required (currently is optional) - In 'Type' dropdown list, add 'Implementation' below 'Testing'
S17a	High	Yes	AOS do Phase 2	Release form changes: - Make 'Short Description' field required (currently is optional) - Change the text description for the field 'Default Team' to just say 'Team'
S18a	High		AOS do Phase 2	Sprint form changes: - Make 'Short Description' field required (currently is optional) - Add 'Planned hours', 'Remaining hours', 'Actual hours' fields that roll up everything in the spring/sprint tasks/stories.
S19	Medium	No	AOS do Phase 2	Ability to create cost tasks for enhancements
S20	Medium	Yes	Internal Admin do	Make the 'Actuals' field uneditable in the Task Progress Board, as well as in the task card.
	Medium	Yes	Internal Admin do	Set up Related List from Enhancement to the Demand
	Low	Yes	Internal Admin do	Set up SDLC Scrum Task to auto-default to the person opening it (but assigned to field will be editable)
	Medium	Yes	Internal Admin do	Ability to log time against a Defect

There's plenty of requirements that I'm sure we missed including here, because some configuration was done during the meetings. The trick is to remember what was done in the meetings and to remember to move that to Production!

Testing:

We split our UAT across two weeks, and several different people by their role. Our Scrum Master was the only one who tested the functionality of   creating Enhancements, Products, etc. since only that role will be doing that.

Before the team could start general SDLC testing, our Scrum Master had to set up Products, Releases, Sprints, and Enhancements - and then reference in the test script the Sprint # to start off with. So this took some pre-work on her side. And since this is her first time using ServiceNow SDLC, it took some time for her to learn this as well. Looking back, it would have been easier / much less time consuming on our side to spend the time/$ having our implementation consultants get the process figured out & train us on SDLC rather than us figuring this out.

Although most people in I.T. have never encountered a project with formal waterfall Risk & Issue tracking, Decision logging, etc., I still had many of them test this functionality so they can get used to such a process, even if our org isn't ready for such formal functionality & tools yet.

Here is a copy of our Project module test script, and here is a copy of our SDLC test script.

After taking a few weeks for our Scrum Master & I to get everything figured out & test scripts written & pulled into SN, the actual testing went pretty quickly in the 2 weeks we had allocated.

Next steps

Get some good Project & SDLC User guides made, get PPM training planned.