Lenses in Strategic Planning

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Lenses in Strategic Planning

    Lenses in Strategic Planning provide distinct planning perspectives tailored to different managerial roles within an organization. They enable planning managers to create personalized portfolio plans that prioritize and align work with high-level initiatives and business goals. By selecting a lens, users adopt a specific viewpoint for planning and funding work relevant to their organizational role.

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    Lens Structure

    Each lens consists of a hierarchical structure composed of entities representing various organizational levels, such as Company, Business Unit, and Department. Planning managers build portfolio plans at these levels and prioritize work items, including epics, projects, demands, or custom types, aligned to their lens. You can start with predefined lenses or create custom lens structures with up to six hierarchical levels to fit your planning requirements.

    Pre-defined Lenses and Their Use Cases

    ServiceNow provides nine pre-defined lenses designed for common planning roles and scenarios:

    • Organization: For department heads and business unit heads to plan and track work aligned with organizational levels.
    • Product: For product leaders and managers to plan, fund, and prioritize work from a product perspective.
    • Digital Product: For digital product leaders and managers to roadmap work related to digital products, integrating with Digital Product Release Workspace if installed.
    • Strategic Investments: For strategy leaders and EPMO to oversee strategic initiatives and programs.
    • Goals: For portfolio managers and business unit heads to create and collaborate on goal-driven plans, set targets, and track progress.
    • Value Stream: For value stream and ART managers to plan and prioritize work within value streams.
    • Project Portfolio: For project and portfolio managers to manage project portfolios.
    • Business Capability: For enterprise architects to plan based on business capabilities or applications; requires Enterprise Architecture Workspace.
    • Project Program: For portfolio and program managers to manage programs effectively.

    Customization and Configuration

    Administrators can modify pre-defined lens structures or configure new lenses to match specific planning manager needs. This flexibility allows organizations to align strategic planning with unique operational structures and roles.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Align work with strategic goals by choosing appropriate planning perspectives.
    • Build and manage portfolio plans tailored to organizational roles and levels.
    • Prioritize and fund work effectively across various business entities and initiatives.
    • Leverage integration capabilities, such as with Digital Product Release Workspace and Enterprise Architecture Workspace, for enhanced planning insights.
    • Customize lenses to fit unique organizational structures and planning needs.

    Lenses represent planning perspectives, which would be different for planning managers at different levels in an organization. Lenses enable you to create personalized portfolio plans through which you prioritize and align work with high-level initiatives and goals.

    Lenses overview

    Lenses in Strategic Planning indicate a perspective in which you can plan and fund work. By selecting a lens, you choose a planning perspective to prioritize and align your work in. For example, if you're a department leader, you can choose the Organization lens. If you're a product manager, you can choose the Product lens.

    Lens structure

    Each lens in Strategic Planning consists of a structure that is made up of entities. Lens entities represent different levels of planning for your company. You can build portfolio plans at one of these levels.

    The planning item types associated with the bottom entity of a lens represent the type of work that can be planned using these portfolio plans.
    Figure 1. Sample lens structure
    Lens structure

    For example, the Organization lens has a Company, Business Unit, and Department as its entities. As the head of the Support department, you can create a portfolio plan at the department level. Then, you can prioritize the work that is assigned to the department and plan a roadmap for the prioritized work. This work can be in the form of epics, projects, demands, or any other custom type.

    Get started with one of the pre-defined lenses, or build a custom lens structure, with up to six levels, to suit your planning needs.

    Pre-defined lenses and their structure

    Strategic Planning provides nine pre-defined lenses to get you started with building your portfolio plans - Project Portfolio, Project Program, Organization, Strategic Investments, Product, Digital Product, Value Stream, Goals, and Business Capability. Planning managers can use these lenses based on their role at the company.

    Figure 2. Structure of pre-defined lenses
    Predefined lenses - Project Portfolio, Project Program, Organization, Strategic Investments, Product, Digital Product, Value Stream, Goals, and Business Capability.
    Lens Planning levels (Lens entities) Planning manager Description
    Organization
    • Company
    • Business unit
    • Department
    • Department head
    • Business unit head

    Plan and track the delivery of work in my organization and visualize how the work is aligned to various levels.
    Product
    • Company
    • Product models
    • Product leader
    • Product manager

    Plan, fund, and prioritize work from a product lens.
    Digital Product
    • Application Model
    • Product Feature
    • Product Enhancement
    • Product leader
    • Product manager

    Plan, prioritize, and roadmap work for digital products.

    If the ServiceNow® Digital Product Release Workspace is installed, the planning items associated with the product enhancement appear in the Planning items tab of the Release scope page in Digital Product Release Workspace. For details, see Scope of a release.
    Strategic Investments
    • Company
    • Strategic priority
    • Initiative
    • Strategic program
    • Strategy leader
    • EPMO

    Plan, manage, and provide oversight for strategic initiatives or programs regardless of who is doing the work.
    Goals

    Goal
    • Portfolio manager
    • Business unit head
    • Create, share, and collaborate on a portfolio plan for defined goals.
    • Set targets for the goals to track their progress.
    • Align, prioritize, and roadmap the work you must do to achieve them.
    Value stream
    • Product model
    • Value Stream
    • Value stream manager
    • ART manager
    		 Plan, fund, and prioritize work for a value stream.
    Project Portfolio

    Portfolio
    • Product manager
    • Portfolio manager
    		 Plan, fund, and prioritize work in your project portfolios.
    Business Capability
    • Business capability
    • Business application
    		 Enterprise architect Plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work based on your business capabilities or business applications.

    This lens can be used only if the ServiceNow® Enterprise Architecture Workspace is installed.
    Project Program
    • Portfolio
    • Program
    • Portfolio manager
    • Program manager
    		 Plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work in your programs.
    • If you're an admin, you can modify the structure for these pre-defined lenses or configure a new lens altogether based on your planning manager's requirements. For more information, see Lens configuration in Strategic Planning.
    • If you're a planning manager, learn about portfolio plans to start aligning your work with the business strategy. See Portfolio plans in Strategic Planning.