In real world scenarios, service providers may stand up internal or paid customer order delivery project(s) to coordinate and track project task assignments required to be completed to deliver timely fulfillment of simple or complex customer orders to manage and coordinate the fulfillment related activities. These may include both OMT and non-OMT project tasks to be completed.
OMT project management for oversight decisions tables are configured to enable OMT to determine if a customer order’s top line order item will be subject to project management oversight.
In the scenario for a multi-site customer order, OMT will determine and request SPM to instantiate multiple projects that will track the fulfillment order tasks required to deliver the products, services and resource items that will complete the customer’s order.
SPM programs and projects
In this article we will examine a multi-site project, and the exercise is to show:
- How to create a project task template to capture in a hierarchical fashion parent and child order tasks that will be project tasks that OMT will synchronize to project tasks. Note – a customer order’s top line order line is a project, a domain order is a project task, and order tasks are child project tasks if configured correctly in the SPM project template).
- Configuring the project management oversight for order line-item decision table in OMT
- Configuring OMT project management oversight for domain order decision table with many domain orders (product-service-resource) in OMT
- Configuring OMT project management oversight for order tasks (many order tasks) in OMT
Its more than likely that a service provider's program management office (PMO) will require that customer order delivery projects have program level oversight. OMT in the Vancouver release does not support automatic creation of programs, which are analogous with OMT automatically determining that an customer order itself is a program. The Vancouver release of this feature works at the top line order line level of the Customer Order object hierarchy - SPM project level.
So, the program manager would manually create a customer program and collect the New-Add Customer Order projects to include in the customer program created. Then the PMO can assign project managers for each customer project, and provide program level oversight,
SPM Program Workbench example for New-Add Customer Order for Premium SD-WAN customer program
PMO Dashboard view of a collection of customer projects for program level oversight
So, the goal of is to setup a moderately complex customer order as multi-site delivery projects, then in the next article we will be look at real-time order task to project task updates and work note synchronization (OMT work notes to SPM project notes for the set of projects).
Steps that will be articulated in the article:
- Configure an SD-WAN Service Package New-Add Customer Order as a customer project
- Configure the customer project's project tasks with all the SD-WAN new -add fulfillment plan order tasks as project tasks in the SPM SD-WAN Service Package project
- Create a new project template from the configured customer project that will be used in OMT decision tables to determine if a New-Add customer order for SD-WAN Service Package
- Configure the OMT project management determination tables to enable OMT to recognize the conditions that determine project management oversight is required for the order
Use case one – Configure a project template.
Description: As a program or project manager I require that the system administrator or some persona with SPM admin privilege create a project template for a New-Add SD-WAN product offering customer order that will be delivered with project management oversight and automatic tracking of order fulfillment tasks state changes and fulfillment manager or agent posted work notes to update project notes.
I require project oversight project task granularity to be hierarchical, meaning I need to see the relationships between parent order tasks as parent project tasks, and child order tasks as child project tasks. This will provide me the visibility and automatic tracking of all domain order and order tasks within the customer order project that I am overseeing.
Objective: Configure an SD-WAN product offering (it’s in the OMT demo data) for all the order tasks to be tracked
Background:
We will configure a customer project template for the premium SD-WAN Offering:
Create a new customer project from the SD-WAN Bundle demo template.
Note: this is not a tutorial on how to create parent to child project task relationships. To understand how to do that, refer to the SPM documentation.
Customer project manager tasks (servicenow.com)
Overview
In this exercise, we will create a somewhat busy project that reflects an SD-WAN Service Package new-add customer order to be delivered as a project with all the related domain orders and order tasks that will be tracked and OMT will automatically synchronize with SPM project tasks.
The Premium SD-WAN offering’s product order (top order line item) will be the project and domain orders and order tasks will be captured in the project as project tasks.
Reference the below diagram and table showing the following of the SD-WAN Service Package that will be captured as a project and project tasks.
- SD-WAN Service Package – Top order line item as the project that will be instantiated in SPM.
- Domain orders as parent project tasks to be instantiated in SPM project.
- Order tasks as child project tasks of domain order to be instantiated in SPM as project tasks.
Note: the premium SD-WAN offering is accessible as demo data within OMT [if demo data has been selected when loading the Vancouver OMT plugin into your instance].
Create a cheat sheet for reference when creating project tasks in your new project for project management oversight:
Another way to visualize the project to be created and saved as a template is to create a listing of the parent and child project tasks as captured from the order fulfillment plan. This helped me as I tend to lose my place in SPM project task template when I am creating many customer fulfillment order tasks that I want as SPM project tasks in the project template:
Step 1 – Select and configure a new customer project in SPM from the existing SPM demo project template a customer project template.
Step 2 – Create a new customer project from the SD-WAN Customer Bundle template [ the Vancouver release has provided a demo customer template in SPM]
Step 3 – create a project from the template.
Name the new project such that it identifies the type of order you want to have customer order project oversite for:
Step 4 – Delete the existing rows of the Project Tasks in the new project template, since it has the demo project template project tasks in it…we want an empty project since we are going to create a brand-new project. Sorry, it’s going to be a busy project, with lots of order tasks to track in SPM that OMT at runtime will keep in sync with the project tasks we are creating.
Step 5 – Once you have an empty project tasks list - under the Project Task Tab above shown above – create [add in] the new project tasks that are OMT domain orders as parent project task and order tasks as children of the parent domain order project task.
In a real-world scenario, chances are that the service provider once adopting the SPM integration with OMT, will frequently select an existing product offering that it is desired to be subject to project oversight based on business policies for what orders will be subject to either as a paid by the customer project management service or as an internal project that is part of the customer delivery.
We can capture a completed customer order that has been fully decomposed then capture all the domain order entities that you want to configure as project tasks within the SPM project task template associated with the project that you’ve created.
Tip: I prefer to add the parent and child project tasks grouped by domain order project tasks like, it provides a nice project tracking layout in the project view for the project manager and as a domain order’s tasks are completed, it rolls up the state of the project to the parent project task in a hierarchical view.
Caution: When creating the short description of a project task, it is important that you name it exactly as the order request type name, or else OMT will not be able to map the project task to order task to establish synchronization.
Domain orders as parent project tasks in SPM project that you created:
Planning console view in SPM of parent project task (Domain order) and child project tasks (order tasks). You should have 13 project tasks created:
Domain order as parent project tasks:
Order tasks as child order project tasks of domain order parent project tasks:
Step 6 - Save the new project
Step 7 – Once you have all project tasks in your new project, it should look like this when you look at the task hierarchy in SPM for your project:
Project task hierarchy list in SPM
Step 8 - Verify that a new project template has been created and the project that became a new template and if correctly configured, you should have 39 project template tasks defined within the project template:
Next -Configuring project management oversight decision tables.
Overview
Once have the customer project template created in SPM, the administrator role will configure the OMT Project Management for Oversight decision tables in OMT with the input conditions required for OMT to determine a customer order is subject to oversight and the customer order fulfillment tasks that will synchronize with the SPM defined project tasks captured in the project task template.
The following OMT project management for Oversight decision tables will be configured:
Project Management Oversight for Order Line Item
- This decision table is used to associate the input top order line item with one or more project templates based on the satisfying conditions. Please note that the condition columns are demo data and will need to be updated by the customer. Refer to the demo data rows in this decision table as examples.
Project Management Oversight for Domain Order
- This decision table is used to associate the input domain order with one or more project template tasks based on the satisfying conditions. Please note that the condition columns are demo data and will need to be updated by the customer. Refer to the demo data rows in this decision table as examples.
Project Management Oversight for Order Task
- This decision table is used to associate the input order task with one or more project template tasks based on the satisfying conditions. Please note that the condition columns are demo data and will need to be updated by the customer. Refer to the demo data rows in this decision table as examples.
OMT project management oversight decision tables
Step 1 – Configure the Project Management Oversight for Order Line-Item decision table in order to allow OMT to identify specification (top line order item) conditions are true for determining project oversight is required:
The OOB conditions are Action, Specification, Account and location.
For each top order line item in the order– it’s a 3-site order, you need to specify each location the service will be delivered and the project template that OMT will target to instantiate a project.
Note – As you can see, this decision table has a couple of different templates, you may have a situation that per location, different levels of project task granularity may be desired by the project manager.
Each template and input conditions could have OMT request SPM to instantiate different projects; internal projects, customer projects, projects for different types of orders, project with different sets of order tasks granularity to track as project tasks [depending on how the project task templates are configured in SPM.
Also, depending on the customer order, the same account may have different product offerings, so different project templates may be triggered.
OMT Project Management Oversight for Order Line Item
Step 2 – Configure the Project Management Oversight for Domain Order decision table.
Tip, you may have exported a decision table that had many of the same inputs for domain order conditions, reconfigure the inputs in the excel spreadsheet and import. and simply import back the table conditions to populate the table and extend as necessary.
You can use this export I created to import into the decision table for Project Management Oversight of Domain orders:
Project_Management_Oversight_for_Domain_Order_Export_20231122_151805.xlsx
Example purposes:
Step 3 – Configure the Project Management Oversight for Order Task decision table.
Note: here is an example of doing an import of a decision table conditions that was previously used for a similar SD-WAN Offering for a change order. It had many of the same order tasks as the new order, and I decided as a best practice to always export decision table conditions for re-use for other project scenarios. For very large complex orders that may have a LOT of order tasks, why create from scratch all the request types again?
You may use this excel export file to load the table that I've already configured:
Project_Management_Oversight_for_Order_Task_Export_20231102_020205.xlsx
Make sure to always save after importing!
Congratulations, you now have a moderately complex demo to use at run-time with 39 project tasks that once the customer order is approved, OMT will refer to these decision tables, reach out to SPM, identify based on the project and project template tasks.
When the project is created, the attributes configured in CSM Table Map are updated for the project. Similarly, when each domain order and order task is created and if matching project task is located, the attributes configured in corresponding CSM Table Map are updated on the project task.
The following one-time mapping and synchronization occurs for
- Order Line Item to Customer Project
- Order Line Item to Project
- Order Task to Customer Project Task
- Order Task to Project Task
- Domain Order to Project Task
- Domain Order to Customer Project Task
When the top order line-item Order Line Item, Domain Order or Order Task is updated that has corresponding projects or project tasks. Then runtime synchronization on update of state, work notes and additional comments.
There are async Business rules that listen to these attributes on the order line and order task or domain order. To add more attributes for run time synchronization, consider adding additional async BRs that listen on those attributes.
You are now ready for the next article, which we will explore order tsk to project task runtime synchronization, new project management oversight relationship UI tab - tables and views, as well as some runtime tips such as organizing your multiple active internal or customer projects for an order that has multiple locations in a customer or internal SPM program, useful to uniquely name an active project if you have many active projects running.
