Resource management - difference between role and skill

[Louis Savalli]

What is the difference between role and skill in resource management?  Looking at the demo data, they seem interchangeable.  

[Yashsvi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Louis Savalli,

In ServiceNow, especially within the context of Resource Management, roles and skills serve distinct purposes and are not interchangeable, despite any similarities in the demo data. Here’s a detailed explanation of the differences:

 Role:

- A role in ServiceNow defines a specific set of responsibilities or a job function that a user or a resource performs within an organization.

- Roles are used to allocate resources to tasks based on their job functions. For example, a role could be "Project Manager," "Developer," or "Business Analyst."

- Users are assigned roles based on their job descriptions or organizational positions. Roles determine what tasks they can perform and what resources they have access to within the platform.

Skill:

- A skill represents a specific ability, proficiency, or expertise that a user or resource possesses.

-  Skills are used to match resources to tasks that require particular abilities. Skills can be technical (e.g., "Java Programming," "Network Security") or non-technical (e.g., "Leadership," "Negotiation").

- Users are assigned skills based on their experience, certifications, or demonstrated abilities. Skills are used to ensure that the right resource with the appropriate expertise is selected for a task.

Roles and skills complement each other in resource management. Roles ensure that resources fit the overall job function, while skills ensure that they have the precise abilities needed to complete tasks effectively.

-Efficient Resource Planning: By using both roles and skills, you can ensure that resources are not only broadly qualified but also specifically capable, leading to more efficient and effective project execution.

Conclusion:  while roles and skills might appear similar in demo data, they serve different and complementary purposes in ServiceNow's Resource Management. Roles define broad job functions, while skills specify particular abilities, ensuring both general and detailed matching of resources to tasks.

Thank you, please mark helpful, if you accept the solution.

[Louis Savalli]

Great answer, thank you!  What confuses me is that quite often, resource groups are used to broadly categorize people by their abilities, like the Network group, or Project Managers group.  In that use case, groups and roles are the same thing.  I guess, ultimately, group, role and skill are whatever we want them to be.  Unless I've been misunderstanding groups this whole time?

[Carina Hatfield]

With the new resource assignments, we broke them out as separate attributes so there is more flexibility to adapt to how you want to plan resource needs (which could be different across the organization) rather than having them condensed into a hierarchy that is difficult to manage or analyze. 

Additionally, if you are using Employee Workflows, the skills are the some ones so that you can tie them into skills managed and updated by HR.  It can be a big effort to enter and manage skills so partnering with HR can have a bigger impact on employee engagement, identifying and resolving skill gaps, and improving everyone's experience in the organization.  We have some interesting features on our roadmap to support additional use cases with employee workflows as well!  If interested, happy to connect.

[kiranmathew]

Anyone know if skills can be used to automate group assignments in servicenow?