“Is your team ready for the workshops?”
I always knew the answer to this question. Even when they said yes…they rarely ever were.
Prior to becoming a Training Solution Consultant, I spent my first 5 years at ServiceNow as a Principal Engagement Manager (EM) managing complex implementations for some of our biggest accounts. Today, as a Training Solution Consultant, I’m still helping our customers implement successfully, leveraging important lessons and best practices I learned as an EM.
As an EM, I quickly became aware of the correlation between the training of key stakeholders and the overall success of a project, more specifically, training these people prior to the Plan Phase requirements (user story) workshops.
So, why is fundamental platform and product specific training so regularly ignored when Customers are preparing their team for a project? Especially after an executive sponsor has stuck their neck out and signed on to a multimillion dollar deal? You would think that type of investment would be followed by a carefully planned preparation and user enablement phase before kicking off the engagement with the delivery team.
The answer is usually time. Once a deal is finally signed after months of negotiation, executives want (or need) to see a tangible output as soon as possible to justify the investment. They usually don’t want to spend the first precious days or weeks of a project having their project team fully occupied with training. However, I can attest first hand that making that upfront investment by properly preparing and training your team in the basics will, without a doubt, lead to a more successful outcome, including an implementation that is better aligned to your business needs, more often than not delivered on time or earlier, have better user adoption, and even potentially reduce total project spend.
I have seen the following two scenarios play out in front of me a number of times:
Scenario #1 – None of the attendees have completed the recommended ServiceNow training prior to the requirements (user story) workshops.
- Outcomes:
- The planned workshop phase is often doubled in length due to the delivery team essentially having to train the customer in the basics of the platform and product from scratch
- Basic vocabulary and terms are misaligned between the teams
- Customer proposes unnecessary user stories
- Frustrated customer and delivery team
- Morale between the teams is poorly impacted
- Project dates pushed out
- Due to the frustration and wasted time, there is even less time and enthusiasm for the team to commence their ServiceNow Training journey
Scenario #2 – Attendees have completed the recommended ServiceNow training prior to the requirements (user story) workshops.
- Outcomes:
- Detailed requirement (user story) discussions can begin almost immediately in the workshops after a short overview and demo
- Customer comes with a more refined and meaningful list of proposed user stories
- Planned workshop phase duration is usually met
- Morale boost for the project team due to a positive outcome from an early phase of the project
- Positive reinforcement encourages the attendees to continue the ServiceNow training journey
Having your key stakeholders who will be attending the workshops (i.e. Product Owners, Process Owners, Subject Matter Experts and Business Analysts) arrive having completed fundamental ServiceNow platform and product specific training will have a tremendously positive impact to both the project team and outcome of the implementation.
My general guidance is for these key stakeholders to complete as much of the following training as possible prior to the workshops:
- Get Started with the Now Platform (Free – On-Demand, 14 mins)
- ServiceNow Fundamentals (Free – On-Demand until 31/8/22, 15 hours 15 minutes)
- Product Specific Fundamentals (300 Learning Credits – On-Demand*, varying durations)
*Public and private Instructor-Led Class options also available, search for the course via Now Learning.
Finally, my guidance to any project manager is to ensure that you have completed Get Started with Now Create (Free, On-Demand, 48 mins) prior to planning or kicking off any ServiceNow project. This course will teach you about the ServiceNow implementation methodology and how to access and make the best use of a literal ‘war chest’ of free templates, project plans, prescriptive guidance, leading practices, and accelerators to help you throughout your ServiceNow implementations, upgrades and more. There are even product-specific Customer Workshop Preparation Guides in there!
Investing in your people and your project through training, especially at the start of, or ideally prior to your project commencing is absolutely crucial when trying to ensure the overall success of your project. So if you’re an Executive Sponsor, make sure you factor in this time and investment with your team. If you’re a Project Manager, make sure you have time for this allocated in your plan and if you’re one of the key stakeholders attending the workshops make sure you actually do the training... so that when the EM asks, you can say…we’re ready for the workshops!
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