I will use an imagined situation to demonstrate when and how to use staggered decomposition.
Here it is: -
I sat with Nadia, a Telecom Product Manager from Company XYZ. She’s working on creating a Full Fibre Broadband Service specification. This specification requires two other specifications
- Service Access Point
- Wireless Access Service
However, the Wireless Access Service should only be available to customers who order 200 MB internet speed. Nadia mentioned that the speed characteristic won’t be available at the point of order creation.
Instead, Salesforce will update the speed characteristic once the order is approved or a few minutes after the approval. Despite this, Nadia emphasized that time is crucial for her team, and she doesn’t want to wait for Salesforce to complete its updates. She prefers ServiceNow to process the order immediately, even if the speed characteristic isn’t available at that moment.
Now, here is my proposal for Nadia and her team, she can use staggered decomposition.
Staggered decomposition enables breaking down orders as quickly as possible, even while certain attributes are absent. This allows orders to move as far as possible without being completely stalled. When the missing attribute becomes available, the process continues smoothly, with no delays.
Now let's implement staggered decomposition.
1 - First, I create three service specifications with all the required characteristics provided by Nadia
2- I create Specification Relationships with the relationship type requires with other specifications
3 - Navigate to Decomposition rule related list, and create a new decomposition rule, making sure that rule works if speed characteristic = 200
Here’s a demo of staggered decomposition in action. Notice how the order initially had only two service orders. Once I updated the speed characteristic, an additional service order was automatically created
