ServiceNow recommendations on Organization's portfolio/program hierarchy

[Aamir Majeed]

Hello Everyone,

My client wants to leverage ServiceNow for managing projects and project financials. The client is organized region-wise and has different LOBs.

What is the ServiceNow recommended best practices to consider as portfolios, programs, etc?

Please let me know if more information is required.

Thanks in advance.

[Sujith Pedapudi]

Hi Aamir,

The standard hierarchy that servicenow recommends is Portfolio -> Programs -> Projects. Where portfolio will be treated as a pool of investments under it to manage the costs. So in your example we can consider Regions as Portfolio and under that we can align multiple LOB's and each LOB will again have execution items. When the execution items are planned or budgeted then they will role up to the respective program and portfolios.

hope this helps.

Thanks,

Sujith

[Jon Miller1]

Programs are optional and I would only use them per program management best-practice; as a collection of projects (and other activities) to achieve a specific goal or objective. One option (which is what we do) is to have a Portfolio for each business function (Purchasing, Finance, HR, etc). You would then use Impacted Business Unit (on a demand) to identify the impacted LOB, allowing for Demand that impacts multiple LOBs. But that does assume the Purchasing function, for example, spans all LOBs. That's what we do because we want to standardize processes across all BUs. But, for you, if each LOB has there own Finance, Purchasing, etc. functions, that won't work.

We also layer on top Business Capability so that each Demand can be "owned" by a single function (Portfolio) but roadmaps can be created for all of the impacted functions (Business Capability). That may work for you; use Portfolio to identify the LOB and use Business Capability to identify the impacted business function(s).

Not sure if that helps but hopefully gives you something to think about.

Jon

[adityad]

Important underlying point is, a Program is a collection of activities to achieve a specific objective wherein the activities follow a common timeline. That is where it differs from Portfolio. 

Another point is, you should not have Business Functions like Purchasing, Finance etc as independent portfolios unless they have their dedicated support functions (such as IT). A Project Portfolio is a collection of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive activities ( Projects, Programs, Tasks) which are funded together. Similarly Service Portfolio and Application Portfolio represent their specific collection.  

I suggest ServiceNow should publish some good practices based on Now on Now or their showcase customers.