K24 – Now Learning - Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Fundamentals

[gtalreja]

Welcome to Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Fundamentals at Knowledge24 Now Learning Pre-Conference Training!

We will be using this forum to:

• Connect – You are welcome to introduce yourself using the COMMENT button and share your role within your organization and what you hope to get from this learning experience.
• Ask and answer questions - Please post comments or questions here using the COMMENT button. Classroom staff will respond to the best of their ability.
• Share resources – Let us share resources and links that will be valuable for future reference.

NOTE: Now Learning staff will stop monitoring this article on May 24

[Erin Dabbs]

So excited to meet everyone! 

[JasonH5]

Good Morning, Everyone!!! First day of class!!

[tahnalos]

Hello There

[Henrik Lukkaril]

Henrik Lukkarila, Business Analyst at Procori, from Västerås in Sweden.

Looking forward to get more depth knowledge on how SPM is working.

[Daniel Billing]

Works at ProCori , Swedish SN Partner
Split role as Solution Architect and Head of business development. I'm also SN trainer
Hope to gain insights on maturing in Strategy planning and DPM , to be able to map activities to goals

[Jessica Montano]

My name is Jessica Montano, I am a Sr. IT Analyst with the County of Fresno (California, US) with our Internal Services Department IT Division. I am the team lead for our project management team with a PMP certification with PMI, I am taking this course because we are implementing SPM and I want to learn best practices and establish an implementation roadmap for short term and long term iterations.  We are currently using ServiceNow and started with ITSM a few years ago.

[Alicia R_]

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in class or post them here. We will answer online.

[Daniel Billing]

Is the Idea manager responsibility to interact with Stakeholders and get an approval to push the Idea to Demand/epic/story?
Where would cost/resource estimates be captured if creating a Story directly from the Idea?
i can see that it puts a lot of required skills on the Idea manager

[Alicia R_]

Hi Daniel, 

   The Idea Manager reviews the ideas posted. Suppose it is interesting or most voted for one or multiple products/processes. In that case, they convert it into a demand so the demand manager can work with the stakeholders and product managers to move the demand forward into execution or reject it. Usually idea manager can also have the product manager role.

The idea does not have cost/resource estimates; the idea should be converted to a demand to study the cost, resources, and feasibility and then converted from there to a story or Epic.

[Daniel Billing]

Why should an operational Demand go through a defect and then into a story?
Are Enhancement always strategic?

[Henrik Lukkaril]

Should you cancel demands where there is a catalog item request already defined?

[Alicia R_]

The available values in the type field depend on the value selected in the category field. The type field determines the type of record to which the demand can be promoted.

• If a demand can support the "keeping the lights on" criterion, it is considered operational. In case you choose the operational category, you will only be able to promote the demand for a change or defect.
• If a demand works towards achieving an organizational goal, it is classified as strategic. Selecting the strategic category limits promotion to enhancement, project, epic, or story.

A product enhancement requires some planning and usually works to achieve some of the product portfolio goals, so it is strategic.

[Alicia R_]

Hi Henrik,

  RITM is a tool used to fulfill service requests such as adding a user to a group, providing access to an application, or ordering a computer. On the other hand, demand management is a part of project management that enables you to manage and release your demands in production. Demands can be for adding new features to a product or deploying a new application.

Demand management is a catalog item itself. When you install demand management and have a service portal also in your platform, the installation creates a catalog item to create demands.

[Alec Hoke]

In what situations/why would a demand be submitted directly by a user vs. them submitting an Idea first and then the ideal manager creating a demand from that?

[Daniel Billing]

As a demand manager using the demand dashboard ,  how do i interact with the Submitter?
Do i always need to go to the idea portal to write comments?  .... excluding the options of emails and calls

[Alicia R_]

Hi Daniel, 

ServiceNow sends an email to no-reply@servicenow.com with the person who submitted the idea when the idea state changes. 

When an idea converts to a demand, the status changes to "In backlog," when the market is completed, the idea status changes to "Complete."

Of course, the demand manager, or many times, the BRM (Business Relationship Manager) keeps updating the business user with the status during the demand completion.

[Alec Hoke]

In what situations/why would a user submit a Demand directly vs. submitting an Idea which is converted to a Demand by the Demand manager?

[Henrik Lukkaril]

For demand and the score calculations, does companies start using this direcly during their demand journey (crawl) or do they implement this later when they have matured their demand process (walk, run, fly)?

My experience from other modules and functionality it could be better to wait with automatic calcuations if your processes are imature.

[Alicia R_]

FORMULA FOR score NORMALISATION

((Input Value -Min value defined in metric) / (Max value defined in metric -Min value defined in metric))  * ((Current metric weight / Sum of valid metric weight) * scale factor)

[Daniel Billing]

should the efforts on a demand manager for submit/screening be part of resource cost? eg for a large and complex demand there might be a lot of work to be done before getting to Qualify stage

How to set a Governance on Demand managers that they are working on the right demands.

[Alicia R_]

Yes, you are correct. Asessments are usually implemented when they are more mature with their demand assessment process.

[Alicia R_]

Daniel, great question. That is something agreed upon as part of the demand process design. Many times, it needs to be taken into account as part of each demand. They are part of the global budgeting process for the department.

Regarding governance, the demand management process in the solution has two approval steps; first, DM checks if the demand is somehow interesting, not duplicated, etc... and if the demand passes that, then they work to complete the minimum required information to evaluate it.

This would be the general process, but each company would decide that operational demands are not critical or other criteria to rank the backlog for the demand manager.

[Alicia R_]

If you are interested in how the solution calculates the demand scores, let me know here so I can share how it is calculated with you. Thanks.

[Alec Hoke]

Can you configure the score calculation to ignore the financial data if you are not using it and remove it from any assessments?

[Daniel Billing]

Is there possibilities to create dependencies between Demands?

[Alec Hoke]

Testing

[Alicia R_]

Yes, demands have a related list to parents' demands. See the screenshot below

[pbretelson]

Question on project workspace.  My users are still using the classic version of project workspace (Utah).  Is there a best practice to help migrate users to the latest project workspace (Vancouver)?

[Alicia R_]

Good question. Technically speaking, there is no migration to be done. It is just another UI, so activate and use it. Tables, and all are the same.

We recommend activating PW in a development environment and training and coaching the project managers before switching to PROD.

[Siva Ponnada]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Siva Ponnada, ServiceNow Platform Architect at ASP, Belgium. I'm here to gain more insights into Strategic Portfolio Management and to help our clients implement SPM effectively.

[Alicia R_]

Most projects will be created via the Demand Process. When a Project is created from a demand, the Approved Start/End Dates are auto-populated from the Approved Demand’s Start/Due dates.

Approved Start/End Dates are used in the Portfolio Planning Workspace to show the project in the roadmap. If the project’s planned dates differ from the approved dates, they will be shown in red.

Projects that do not require a demand can be created manually. Only the users with the project manager role can create projects manually.

Another way to create a project is from the Project Workspace. The Project Workspace application provides an interactive UI to enable the project manager to create, plan, track, and monitor projects from a single location.

Users can create a project from other processes like:

• Integrations: The Now Platform can be integrated with third-party solutions.
• Other ServiceNow applications: Like Customer Service Management or Application Portfolio Management.

[Jessica Montano]

I am not familiar with ServiceNow schedules as mentioned in the class. Where do you configure/define the Project Management Schedule work days/hours?

[Henrik Lukkaril]

@Jessica Montano as a admin you can change/create schedules in System scheduler-> Schedules - >Schedules, search for  Project Management Schedule that we used.

More info: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/washingtondc-platform-administration/page/administer/time/concept...

[Alicia R_]

Hi Jessica,

Great question: Let me give more details about Project schedules.

The Schedules field that is used to calculate project duration and planned end dates by defining working and non-working days and hours.

The default schedule is an 8-hour workday, from 8 to 12 and 1 to 5. A day is considered a working day, not a 24-hour day.

Let’s review how schedules and calendars work in more detail:

• At times, it may be necessary to merge two calendars into a single schedule. This can be achieved by creating a child schedule.
• Should you modify the default schedule for the project, the project will undergo recalculation to reflect the new schedule.
• Additionally, you can generate additional schedules with time zone support and assign them to projects.
• Holidays can be defined as a schedule entry to create exceptions to existing schedules and to support multiple regions that follow the same work schedule but have different holidays.
• If you use the default schedule with an 8-hour workday, a project that starts at 8 A.M. on July 1 and ends at noon on July 2 will be calculated as one day and 4 hours, not 28 hours. If you create a project task at 3 P.M. and the default schedule is used, the project start will be set to 8 A.M. on the next working day. This is the earliest time the project can begin, according to the schedule.

The following are basic scheduling properties that are defined during planning and calculated concerning the current schedule:

• Approved start and end date: The dates approved in the roadmap or demand to start and end the project. This field retains the demand start and due date if the project is converted from a demand. They are also the dates used to place the project in the roadmap. The project schedule is not applied to these dates, and the date remains unchanged when you add project tasks to your project. 
• Planned start date: The intended dates the project should begin. Set to the earliest time per schedule.
• Planned end: Initially set to one day after the start date. Auto-updated when duration or planned start date changes.
• Planned duration: Set to 1 day by default. Recalculated if the planned end date is changed.

Before we go to configuration, keep in mind:

1. There a multiple OOTB shedules already availables.

2. Schedule records specify a time zone and a type of schedule and use one or more schedule entries.

3. Schedule entry records specify the time periods that are included or excluded from a schedule. 

To update an existing schedule or  create one, navigate to All > System Scheduler > Schedules > Schedules.

[Daniel Billing]

What logic is setting the current.rollup from false to true?

[SK Chand Basha]

Certification:-

https://servicenow.swoogo.com/knowledge24certification/5464966

[RAMANA MURTHY G]

Hello,

I'm ServiceNow Developer in HCL Tech (Hyderabad, Telangana, India). I have only 1.8 year of experience in ServiceNow Development. I was worked as a lecturer for 10+ years. Recently, I switched from Non-IT to IT. 

Wanted to learn SPM from scratch. (Interested to learn and work on new modules)

Thanks & regards

Ramana Murthy G

ServiceNow Community Rising Star class of 2024

[Alicia R_]

ANSWER TO QUESTION FROM THE CLASSROOM: How can I automatically increase the cost for the product licenses by a % every year?

ANSWER: License costs can be managed in two ways:

1. Using Application Portfolio Management (APM). APM is one of the products that heavily interact with SPM. In the new APM solution, the license cost can be associated with the business application manually,

2. Using SPM - Project Management, You can have a project link to the business application with all the maintenance and licensing costs:

 - In the planned cost, using the fiscal period = year, you can manually create a planned cost for multiple years, including the 10% increase.

In both cases, they are a manual task. A small configuration can be done to accomplish the planned cost creation with a % increase using Flow Designer for No code configurations or scripting.

[Alicia R_]

QUESTION FROM DANIEL: What logic is setting the current.rollup from false to true?

ANSWER: I think you mean project cost rollup. To achieve that, you need to set to true the property "Enable project cost rollup" in  All > Project > Settings > Preferences.

Also current.rollup refers to allocation segments in ITFM. 

[Daniel Billing]

QUESTION FROM DANIEL: What logic is setting the current.rollup from false to true?

in order to get the Move Project UI action: !current.isNewRecord() && gs.hasRole('project_manager') && current.rollup

rollup field is default empty and then set true or false.... where is that happening ?

[Alicia R_]

I get it! Let me check that and reply here!

[Alicia R_]

The answer is coming... the current.rollup will be checked when you have at least one task in the project.

[jessicap7511112]

How often are new releases published?  When will Washington be published?

[Erin Dabbs]

Project Score

Scores are different indicators of a Project.

Risk Score : Risk score is calculated based on the project risk.

Value Score: Value score is calculated based on the ROI% of the project.

Size Score: Size score is calculated based on Planned Cost of the project.

Score: Project score is calculated based on the individual scores of these attributes: Risk Score, Value Score, and Size Score, which in turn are calculated based on risk, planning ROI%, and estimated cost attributes (on a project), respectively.

[Alicia R_]

Family releases are released every six months. Washington was released some weeks ago. Xanadu will be released in Sept-October.

Store applications like Project Workspace are released every three months, and multiple versions are compatible with the family release.

[Felicia Wiberg]

If a user is a member of a group with a specific hourly rate, and the same user also is assigned a skill with another hourly rate, which one of the hourly rates will be used in the Resource plan?

Will there be differences depending on the Resource type defined on the resource plan?

[Alicia R_]

QUESTION: In what situations/why would a demand be submitted directly by a user vs. them submitting an Idea first and then the ideal manager creating a demand from that?

ANSWER: Demand manager is for internal users, no external users. That is part of CSM. For internal users, a category item is created in the service portal to be able to request things directly from there.

For example: Directly by user: New training content for Strategic Portfolio Workspace. 

                       From others: BRM can create demands from the user group they manage or the manager can create all the demands backlog to start doing portfolio evaluation.

[Alicia R_]

QUESTION: Can you configure the score calculation to ignore the financial data if you are not using it and remove it from any assessments?

ANSWER: Yes, you can select what metric categories are part of the score and what assessment metrics are part of each metric category calculation

[Daniel Billing]

if you have monthly reporting and want to have timecards approved during a week with split month,
Could you submit part week?

[Alicia R_]

QUESTION: If a user is a member of a group with a specific hourly rate, and the same user is also assigned a skill with another hourly rate, which one of the hourly rates will be used in the Resource plan?

Will there be differences depending on the Resource type defined in the resource plan?

ANSWER: The hourly rate is assigned following this sequence:

1. when you associate a rate model with a project or demand (financial tab), the rate model derives hourly rates for labor costs from right to left in the rate model columns.

SO, if there is a line with Group-> role-> skill and has all the values, the rate will be taken from the skill; if the line only has Group and role values, then the rate for the role that matches will be used.

2. If there is no rate line matching, then the labor rate cards we saw this morning are used.

3. If no 1 or 2, then the default rate in the project setting is used.