Demand, Project, Enhancement

[Lisa Winder]

We currently use demand, project, enhancement as part of our IT governance process to vette requests. Demands are submitted, vetted and approved and depending on several factors, cost being one of them they are either promoted to a project or an enhancement.  We define an enhancement to be a smaller work effort (<160 hrs) usually comprised of multiple system requirements. We do not typically create demands for an enhancement that only affects one feature since all demands must go through our IT Governance process and this would end up creating a ton of demands.  The problem we've run into is that we have a different process for ServiceNow specific enhancement requests that bypasses our demand process. Currently requests come in as a RITM or Incident from end users for SN specific enhancement suggestions/ideas. Those in turn either get turned into an enhancement or a defect, currently bypassing the demand process all together. The enhancements and defects are prioritized and scheduled into a release. The release goes to change and then deployed to production.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to incorporate our demand process since any application enhancement/project must go through our IT Gov process for approval. We don't want to create a demand for every single enhancement idea request we receive as this would not be efficient and would create a bottle neck.

This is what I'm thinking in terms of process, but I'd love to hear what others thoughts are:

1. create stories for each enhancement request we receive from end users

2. vette each story, gather requirement(s), develop LOE

3. group stories into a release

4. Create Demand for Story Release including business case and cost estimate and obtain approval from IT Governance

5. Assuming <160hrs Promote Demand to an Enhancement

6. Link stories to Enhancement via story related list (we would have to configure our enhancement form to add the related list).

7. Create change for Release

[Jon Miller1]

We have almost exactly the same operating model as you Lisa but implemented "two paths" through our IT governance process. The IT Planning team meet every Tuesday morning and review all new demand. For type=Enhancement, as long as there are no objections and everyone agrees that the number-of-hours threshold has been met, the Demand is turned into an Enhancement there and then. For type=Project, during the same Tuesday meeting, an architect is assigned to create a high-level design and to work with the business team on a business case for a more formal governance review (weekly on Wednesdays). The Wednesday governance review includes all business leaders and only reviews demand of type=Project.

Jon

[lkdomenico]

This thread is super helpful to me and seeing it's a few years old, would love to know if you have matured your processes and what is working.  Thank you!

[Leonel Sandroni]

How do you monitor cost and resources from the enhancements? We are working in a similar case (enhancements are a kind of small projects) and I notices that resource and cost plans doesn't migrate from demands to enhancements...