Kelly's SN implementation Blog Post #6

[kellykaufmann]

Quick note on where we are: We're about half way through Phase 1 of implementing ServiceNow, which is for Incident, Problem, Service Catalogue, Knowledge, & Timecards. We don't yet have a go-live date estimate for Phase 1. We just finished Requirements for Phase 1.

Having dessert first:

My manager called me after work last night, excited to tell me the CIO just had discussions with senior leadership, and senior leadership is hungry to get more involved in prioritizing projects (remember in my last blog post me secretly wishing this would happen?). Woohoo! I thought I was going to have to wait another 6 months or so until leadership reaches that point. It's wonderful when steps in the right direction happen not only organically, but also before you expect them to. The good news is, I've been trying to keep ahead of the game. I had already been researching the functionality of the Demand Management module, we already started setting up basic fields in the Project module, and I had already prepared a presentation with screenshots of the project prioritization functionality in Demand Management so I could facilitate a discussion with the CIO when it happened. All I had to do was schedule the meeting with the CIO (was able to schedule for the next day!), and meet with him to talk through the flow and SN functionality that needs to be set up to support this (the bubble charts, the CIO Roadmap, etc.). The meeting went well — the CIO was already aware of this functionality and excited to use it. The CIO said he has another meeting in almost 3 weeks with leadership, and would like to have our top requested projects in SN and plotted on SN's Bubble Charts & CIO Roadmap for that meeting for possible prioritization/ranking in that meeting. I told the CIO that this functionality is planned for Phase 3 (date TBD), and I asked if he would like to move that functionality from Phase 3 to now. He said yes. This made my day. No, this made my   month! He was pretty excited, too.

This meant that we get to kick off project and portfolio planning processes (which to me is fun to define & set up!) before any other SN functionality goes live. Note that actually managing projects in SN will still be in Phase 3, so it will still be a while before we finish setting up the Project & SDLC/Scrum screens. This will trigger us getting our processes more mature, and will immediately provide more transparency into what I.T. is working on, what I.T. plans to work on, and the total log of requested items. That also means many of us have a lot of work to do in 2 week's time! After these 2 weeks, we'll   continue discussions to form an improved & consistent project review & approval process, and will just tweak the fields & flow in SN as needed.

Here's the plan for getting this set up in the next couple of weeks:

• Tomorrow (Friday): Update the consultants on this plan, confirm they have the resources to do this, get a Change Order drafted & then signed by CIO. Schedule for early next week discussions with the different I.T. teams that will have input to project request/review/approval process & project requests & projects to enter. Schedule time with CIO & others to discuss project request plotting in SN. Schedule review session with CIO for end of week 2.
• Week 1: Early in week, meet with different I.T. teams to understand the current project requests/review/approval process. Early in week, meet with the CIO & some team members to determine what we want the bubble chart quadrants to be, and what values will determine placement on the bubble chart. Come to consensus on the project info/values to gather for requested projects & in-flight projects, give this info to the different I.T. teams so they can gather this info for next week. As we get this info, I'll send it to the developer to set up the Demand & Project modules and the Bubble Chart.
• Week 2: Start validating Demand & Project module setup. Mid-week, each I.T. area to give me a spreadsheet of their team's requested projects & in-flight projects, populated with the values identified in Week 1. Give to developer to import, and at end of week will validate the info and test, request any changes. Create sample reports for the CIO, set up CIO homepage with these reports. Create 'how-to' for CIO on accessing the Demand & Project visualizations. Friday meet with CIO twice — first to show the output of the bubble charts and the sample charts and review some data and him to let me know what he wants to use in his presentation the following week, second to provide these reports & data & screenshots of the bubble chart in a Presentation and teach him how to pull up his homepage, how to find & use the Bubble Chart and the CIO Roadmap.

Pfew! I met with the different IT teams to give them a 'heads up' that next week, I'll be asking for a list of in-flight projects, and a list of projects in the backlog, and noted that we'll be identifying some additional values for them to fill out for each project request/in-flight project. This is going to be a crazy two weeks.

Phase 1 Release 1 UAT: Kicked off. Woohoo!

I finally got a list of testers for testing Phase 1 Release 1. In AOS's SN environment, AOS created a Scrum task for each tester for testing Incident Management and a Scrum task for each tester for testing Problem Management. Each person would update the status of their tasks and would create defects against their tasks. AOS got all the scrum testing tasks created & assigned in AOS's SN environment, and I sent out an email to all the UAT testers (content from this email is available below for you to use as a starting point on your project) and got them kicked off to complete this UAT in 2 weeks.

Other Updates:

• Got single sign-on set up.
• Leadership still has not yet named who will lead our new Centralized Service Desk. Which delays many, many decisions to be made that will impact SN setup. I'm still concerned about getting the Centralized Service Desk planned so we can finish setting up SN and launch this to the organization!

_________________________________

Appendix:

• I found this Demand Management demo video, and thought I'd pass it along: https://community.servicenow.com/community/support/blog/2014/07/31/servicenow-demand-management-demo
• Here's the email I sent to the UAT team:

Good morning

We're ready to kick off acceptance testing (UAT) for Bunzl's ServiceNow Incident & Problem module setup. Your names were provided to participate in this testing, which is scheduled to take place today and last the next 2 weeks [dates]. You will conduct this testing in Bunzl's ServiceNow environment, following the test script & documenting your progress in our service partner AOS's ServiceNow environment — ServiceNow is web-based and can be accessed from anywhere. This will be a great opportunity for you to get a feel for our upcoming new system!

Summary:

• Timeframe for testing: [dates]
• Address for Bunzl's ServiceNow Prod environment, where you will conduct the testing:   [address]. We have single sign-on in place, but if you are off-site, your login is your Bunzl network login.
• Address for AOS's ServiceNow environment, where the test scripts are held and where you will enter your testing updates: [address]. Within an hour you should be able to log in. Your login name will be your email address, and the password will be [password]. You will have to change your password after your first login.
• Since you will be working in two different environments, it may be helpful to keep two browser tabs open or to print out the test script (in ServiceNow, there is a printer icon in the upper right hand corner that will allow you to nicely print out the script page). To differentiate between the environments, the Bunzl environment will have a horizontal red bar, and the AOS environment will only have black horizontal bars.
• 'Heads up' that you may start getting emails from ServiceNow with tasks assigned to you.

Testing Script Steps:

1. Each person doing UAT will have two 'tasks' in AOS's ServiceNow project — one for doing validation for the Incident module, one for doing validation for the Problem module. To find these tasks, login to AOS's ServiceNow environment and on the left side go to 'My Tasks' > 'My Work'.  
2. To open the task, single click on the task number for the module you will begin testing first. I recommend starting with the Incident module. When you first open the task, it will have a 'state' of 'Ready'. Please change this to 'Work in Progress' when you begin testing.
3. Follow the test script from AOS's ServiceNow environment to test in Bunzl's ServiceNow environment.

o When testing and something is found that isn't correct, or you feel something should be changed, create a defect in AOS ServiceNow instance by clicking on the 'Defect' tab within your assignment task and clicking 'New'. Fill out the form, leaving 'Assignment group' and 'Assigned to' blank, and click the 'Submit' button. The defect will automatically stay tied with your task.

  4. When you are finished testing, please select 'Pass' or 'Fail' from the 'Test result' dropdown, change the 'State' to Complete, and click on the 'Update' box to save the change.

If you have any questions/comments/concerns/problems, or if you do not feel you can complete the testing in this timeframe, please do not hesitate to reach out to [implementation consultant] and myself.

Thank you for helping us get this testing completed!