ServiceNow Governance

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of ServiceNow Governance

    ServiceNow Governance offers Impact Customers a structured framework to guide decision-making on how their organization uses and manages the ServiceNow AI Platform. It supports governance across three key domains: strategy, portfolio, and technical. This Impact Accelerator helps customers advance their transformation vision, prioritize work effectively, and maintain the technical integrity of their ServiceNow implementation.

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    What You Get

    • Introductory Customer Session: Sets expectations for process, deliverables, customer participation, and reviews educational materials on governance domains. Requests relevant data and inputs from the customer.
    • Discovery Sessions: Evaluate the current governance model across strategy, portfolio, and technical areas. This includes understanding the customer’s vision, roadmap, demand management, environment, and platform management. Leading practices are discussed and an action plan is proposed.
    • Customer Workshops: Interactive workshops focused on establishing governance boards and policies for strategy (executive steering board), portfolio (demand board), technical governance (technical governance board), and how these domains interrelate. Each workshop includes educational content and hands-on design activities.
    • Governance Deliverables: Provides workshop slides, action planning notes and templates, and draft designs for governance models and processes.
    • Follow-Up Customer Session: Offers Q&A, additional simulations to validate governance structures, and guidance on leading practices.

    Customer Responsibilities and Requested Resources

    Successful governance implementation requires designated customer roles and access to specific documents:

    • ServiceNow Executive Sponsor (Required): The primary strategic contact for ServiceNow engagement.
    • Platform Owner (Required): Accountable for the ServiceNow platform, providing leadership to system administrators and aligning the platform with business strategy and roadmap.

    Customers are expected to provide detailed information and documentation related to:

    • Strategy Governance: Organizational charts, vision and strategy documents, roadmaps, OKRs, business outcomes, business cases, IT governance documents, and steering board materials.
    • Portfolio Governance: Details on demand forums and processes, demand board documentation, current and upcoming platform demand plans, organizational charts related to demand, CoE charter, EA process, development methodologies, and demand scoring criteria.
    • Technical Governance: Technology governance documents, enterprise-wide standards and architecture guidelines, existing technical governance boards, architecture blueprints, project backlogs, IT strategic plans, pain points, business drivers, and exceptions.

    Important Notes

    ServiceNow Governance focuses on guiding the design and setup of governance boards and policies but does not take responsibility for executing the governance strategy or processes within the customer’s organization.

    Guidance on building ServiceNow Governance boards and policies.

    Overview

    ServiceNow Governance provides Impact Customers with a framework that streamlines the decision-making required to define how your organization should use and manage the ServiceNow AI Platform. This includes setting up governance across strategy, portfolio, and technical domains. This Impact Accelerator aims to assist Customers in driving their transformation vision, delivering the right work at the right time, and maintaining the technical integrity of their ServiceNow implementation.

    What You Get

    Introductory Customer Session
    • Set expectations on process and depth of deliverable
    • Communicate expectation for Customer participation
    • Review educational material on ServiceNow governance across strategy, portfolio and technical domains
    • Request data and any other inputs from Customer
    Discovery Sessions
    • Assess current governance model across strategy, portfolio, and technical domains, including:
      • Customer’s vision and strategy roadmap decisions
      • Customer’s demand management
      • Customer’s environment, platform, data, and development management
    • Discuss leading practice content
    • Propose action plan items for Customer to execute
    Customer Workshops
    • Dedicated workshop(s) on setting up strategy governance and the executive steering board
    • Dedicated workshop(s) on setting up portfolio governance and the demand board
    • Dedicated workshop(s) on setting up technical governance and the technical governance board
    • Dedicated workshop(s) on how the three main domains of governance work together
    Note:
    Each workshop includes educational material and interactive activities that will help the Customer design their governance boards and ServiceNow Governance policies.
    Governance Deliverables
    • Workshop slides
    • Action planning notes
    • Action planning templates
    • Draft designs for governance model & processes
    Follow-Up Customer Session
    • Opportunity for Q&A related to governance deliverables
    • Opportunity to run through additional governance simulations to test the Customer’s new governance structure
    • Provide additional guidance on leading practice

    Requested Customer Resources

    Table 1. Customer resource and responsibilities
    Customer Resource  Responsibilities 
    ServiceNow Executive Sponsor- Required Primary strategic contact for ServiceNow.
    Platform Owner- Required Responsible for the overall accountability of the ServiceNow platform. Provides leadership and oversight to the System Administrators, ensures team alignment to business strategy and the ServiceNow roadmap, and is actively involved in the overarching governance of the platform.

    Requested Information / Access

    Strategy Governance:
    • Organization chart for consumers and delivery in the platform
    • Defined vision & strategy for ServiceNow
    • Strategy roadmap and technical roadmap for ServiceNow
    • Documented OKRs, themes and epics
    • Business outcomes aligned to the platform
    • Business case or business case templates relating to the platform
    • IT governance documents relating to the platform
    • Steering board documents, for example
      • charters
      • board participants lists and roles
      • steering board agendas
    Portfolio Governance:
    • Details of any enterprise-level demand forums
    • Any existing ServiceNow demand processes and forums- e.g.: process, intake forms, assessment scorecards, etc.
    • Existing Demand board documents, for example: charters, board participant lists, agendas
    • A view of any in-flight or upcoming platform demand including Project plans & timelines
    • Organization chart- specifically aimed at highlighting where demand can originate
    • CoE Charter (if in place)
    • EA process workbook
    • Development methodology and process (agile and/or waterfall)
    • Demand scoring & weighting criteria
    Technical Governance:
    • Technology governance documents (charters, agendas) - specifically
      • Any enterprise-wide technology governance which may need alignment with
      • Any enterprise-wide technology architecture standards to be observed
      • Any existing platform technical governance boards
    • Architecture blueprint
    • Project backlog
    • IT strategic plan
    • Pain points, business drivers, and desired business outcomes

    Exceptions

    ServiceNow is not responsible for execution of the strategy governance policy or process.