Demand Management: Strategic vs Operational

Randy Borges · ‎03-15-2021

Hi @Namita Mishra,

We have been using ServiceNow Demand and Portfolio Management and are interested in understanding how other institutions are using the two categories within Demands.

Currently you have two options. Strategic and Operational. I have found in testing that you are not able to create projects from Operational Demands which leads me to one of my questions.

What is the purpose using the Operational category? Is it to actually perform the work within the Demand? Who is managing that demand?

Lastly, once demands is created, it automatically populates as Strategic and those are the only ones that allow for the creation of a project. I have done a lot of research on this and this forum appears to be the place that may have the answers. Looking for clarification from anyone who can help shed some light on this topic.

Thanks,

Randy Borges

Jon Miller1 · ‎03-16-2021

I don't like this part of the ServiceNow design, Randy. It precludes the ability to work on a project that is operational in nature. In the real world, a "project" is a mechanism for getting work done. It is not exclusively for "strategic" work. We actually found the two "Operational" types (Change and Defect) were actually causing confusion. We had a lot of departments that insisted they had to enter Demand of type Change for a CR resulting from a project! We ended up disabling "Operational" (i.e. a user can only select category "Strategic") and have, therefore, limited demand to type "Project" and type "Enhancement". We tend not to put "break-fix" through demand management anyway so type "defect" was a little redundant. We never found a sufficient use-case to support type "change". Why go through demand management just for a server reboot?!

I could live with "defect" and "change" for the occasional exception. But what would make sense is to support Strategic-Project and Operational-Project.

Jon

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Jon Miller1 · ‎03-18-2021

I agree Stephanie. The only possible, genuine use I can see for it is for very rare exceptions. I can see that somebody submits demand thinking it's an enhancement or project but it turns out to be a very simple configuration change on a server. In that case Demand>Change might make more sense than forcing the server team to go through the SDLC process of an Enhancement (and then have to create a CR on top). But, as far as I know in 4+ years of running ServiceNow, that use-case has never come up! Like you say, Service Request>CR or even just enter the CR. -Jon

Gerald Fuchs · ‎10-29-2021

@Rae Ann Prasnicki, I do find this approach quite strange. When coming from an Idea, which has very specific information, the next step is in the Demand Process to make a decision if this is an Strategic demand or a Operational Demand.
What are the criteria to make this decision? How is the decision making process guided in ServiceNow? I feel there is a gap here.

JR Laprime · ‎04-11-2023

Just curious, has anyone tried creating a new "Non-Strategic" category as suggested in the following Office Hours video: https://youtu.be/leTE5wzNPWE?t=1154

In this video, the presenter suggested creating a new Category of "Non-Strategic" and allowing "Project" to be a Type of record created. These in theory would be the Operational projects.

Has anyone else tried this solution? I would be interested in learning the pros and cons of this type of solution.