Use Case scenarios for SPM - demand and resource management

[JDavies549]

Hi all,

My organisation is keen on utilising the OOTB SPM modules to assist with demand and resource management. Currently, our process is pretty basic with the use of Microsoft Forms and spreadsheets. One of the main issues around this is the reporting. We just don't have the required functionality to be able to accurately report on resource utilisation which is causing us a bit of a headache. This is where ServiceNow comes in...

The main ask at the moment is to have a customer submission form within the self-service portal where project managers can request resource from our team. This then populates a demand record in the back-end, where resource/demand managers can review these records and process them accordingly (approving the request). Obviously, notifications would be used to ensure clarity and visibility of the request being processed. 

I just wondered what experiences any of you had on using SPM out of the box, any pitfalls to avoid, and generally how this is managed? I've watched a number of videos, which helps to a degree, but we only really want to use a part of the SPM application (as mentioned above) as a starting point. I'm keen to learn more about what happens when a request comes in, how time is allocated, where user availability is recorded and what types of reports you use. I notice that scheduling is sometimes used to user availability, but I'm not entirely sure how this fits into the resource plans and so on.

Whatever advice or experiences people have with SPM, I would appreciate any additional info 🙂

Thank you.

Jon 

[Uncle Rob]

That's an interesting use case.  ServiceNow's vision is more like this.

Demand Management is manages the labor of assessing if an initiative is worth delivering.  Think of it as everything you do BEFORE making a project a project.  In ServiceNow you wouldn't use a Demand as a Resource Request, because that's what Resource Management does.  So lets look at some demand scenarios
- "We want to upgrade the firmware on all our XYZ machines at every location".  Lets plan out the scope, risk, resource, estimated costs, etc."
- "We have 35 projects people want us to do but only have funding for about 10... which are the highest impact for the same amount of money"
- Demand is about "SIZE AND SHAPE of what COULD BE a project".  Demand is not the request for resource.

Part of the Demand's lifecycle may be planning out some resources before the project begins (or even manipulating resource plans once project has started), and going through the negotiation with the resource manager:
- "We'd like Bob for the month of January" / "Sorry, Bob is already committed, but I can give you Jane, but only starting Jan 15th"
- That "negotiation" happens on a Resource Request record that can be created by the PM or the RM.  You don't need to have a self service interface because the PM will have license to the SPM interfaces they need.

[JDavies549]

Thanks Uncle Rob for your reply.

I understand what you're saying (I think). I wonder if our process is somewhat different, although there are definitely similarities. You're right in that the demand submission would essentially be a 'here's what we want to do'. This then includes the scope, risk and impact assessment, start/end dates and estimated resource requirements, plus a few extra bits of detail. The project itself is pre-approved by the respective department before the submission is made. Our involvement is purely a resource assessment. We will likely, for the most part, take the estimate of resource required and use that. Obviously there might be some communication if our RM equivalent thinks the estimate is way off. The RM will assess the ask/request from our perspective and approve based on availability of resource. This is where I get slightly confused with how the resource plans or resource assignments link to the demand.

Let's say the demand record is there, with all the relevant detail and estimated resource requirement (as we are all internal, there is no explicit monetary value to our work). The RM will review the demand record and provided they are happy, will approve this. However, is this where a resource plan would be manually generated, before approving the demand? Let's say the resource estimate is in hours (15hrs), we'd create a resource plan record, and note the 15hrs of required time on the RPL. The RPL would then 'minus' the 15hrs from the user availability? I'm still not sure exactly how this calculation works or where it is all recorded?

Apologies if this all seems quite basic. I used to do some work on ServiceNow, but not for about 5 years, so my knowledge has waned quite a lot in that time!

Thanks again.

[Uncle Rob]

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@JDavies549 wrote:

I understand what you're saying (I think). I wonder if our process is somewhat different, although there are definitely similarities. You're right in that the demand submission would essentially be a 'here's what we want to do'. This then includes the scope, risk and impact assessment, start/end dates and estimated resource requirements, plus a few extra bits of detail. The project itself is pre-approved by the respective department before the submission is made. Our involvement is purely a resource assessment. We will likely, for the most part, take the estimate of resource required and use that. Obviously there might be some communication if our RM equivalent thinks the estimate is way off. The RM will assess the ask/request from our perspective and approve based on availability of resource. This is where I get slightly confused with how the resource plans or resource assignments link to the demand.

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If you're involved in the implementation of SPM, don't look at it from just where YOUR team comes in.  You really need to look at the big picture.  In my SPM experiences, an early sign of failure is teams adopting SPM on their own without looking at the totality of what a PMO needs.

YOUR involvement may be purely resources... but your organization has SOME mechanism to size,shape,plan,approve Projects before they're Projects.  You can't assume they're pre-approved... because that's what the Demand lifecycle is there to do.  Resource planning is also not JUST about the planning & estimation... but about the real life trench war.  "I promised Bob to you 6 months ago to start today but we didn't know Bob's wife was 3 months pregnant and now Bob is on paternity leave, so now you get Jane, but not until 2 weeks later".  

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@JDavies549 wrote:

Let's say the demand record is there, with all the relevant detail and estimated resource requirement (as we are all internal, there is no explicit monetary value to our work). The RM will review the demand record and provided they are happy, will approve this. However, is this where a resource plan would be manually generated, before approving the demand? Let's say the resource estimate is in hours (15hrs), we'd create a resource plan record, and note the 15hrs of required time on the RPL. The RPL would then 'minus' the 15hrs from the user availability? I'm still not sure exactly how this calculation works or where it is all recorded?

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The mechanisms used in Resource Planning are pretty complicated.  Its not as simple as "take 15 hours out of Bob's bucket".  You can almost imagine it like each day is a bucket.  So if you ask for 80 hours in a month... that might be 4 weeks of 20 hours each or 2 weeks of 80 depending on your preferences.  You really can't get enough Resource Planning demo time.  The system is built for deep flexibility... but that also means its not trivially obvious up front.

Yes, those who do resource management on ServiceNow tend to do a bunch of it in Demand... but its not JUST for Demand, because real life is a pain-in-the-arse like that.  "Well we thought we needed 40 hours of Mobile Developer time, but it looks like we need 120".  

Its big and complex... but that's a reflection of real life resource management and less so about SN's impelementation of it.

[Uncle Rob]

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@JDavies549 wrote:

Apologies if this all seems quite basic. I used to do some work on ServiceNow, but not for about 5 years, so my knowledge has waned quite a lot in that time!

Thanks again.

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Resource Management integrated with SPM is hands down one of the most advanced toolings on the platform.  None of this is basic.  There's no upper limit on the amount of time you can spend seeing it in action in order to "get it"