Whether it’s Asset Management, Security Operations, or another ServiceNow module, there’s one thing your organization absolutely must do to avoid the pitfalls others are facing: Spend greater time in the planning phase to gather your essential requirements.
It’s not rocket science, but so many organizations fail to take time to gather their essential requirements. Instead, they rush into the project, only to suffer the consequences later on:
When you don’t take time to gather your requirements before starting your implementation project, you’ll likely have to ask a lot of questions along the way. This will waste valuable time and money — and it will mean less of your budget is used on the configuration.
Your organization is unique and requires a unique solution to support your business needs — so a one-size-fits-all approach will likely give you worse results. But if your implementation team doesn’t understand exactly what you need, that’s the exact type of solution they’ll choose for you. It’s painful when you end up going back to the drawing board and reworking the project, especially when a bit of information on the front end could have brought it from a frustrating failure to a resounding success.
When you shortcut the requirements-gathering process, you often end up with a solution that doesn’t work for your end-users. The last thing you need is to get to the testing phase and have users realize their expectations for ServiceNow are completely different from their needs. It’s a huge headache, because you have to decide to rework the project, delay it, or go live and make improvements as you go.
Reworks, delays, and adjustments typically result in an increased budget. This can quickly lead to tough conversations between you, your project manager, and your leadership as you determine what needs to be prioritized or cut.
Once implemented, ServiceNow modules deliver extraordinary results for your organization. The problem is, if you haven’t taken time in the planning phase to determine clear outcomes, you’ll have no idea whether you’ve really been successful. This can become a long-term issue, because it’s harder to prove the value of technology without concrete pre- and post-implementation metrics for success.
With your implementation journey ahead of you, here are four simple-yet-critical steps that will save you time, money, and the stress of rework.
Identify Key StakeholdersOne of the barriers to effective implementation is a lack of clarity and buy-in from key stakeholders at every phase. So often we will watch a SOW (scope of work) discussion with the project team from executive leadership spiral out of control, simply because communication with key stakeholders has been weak. So, to reduce missed requirements and expectations, it’s essential that you identify and involve your key stakeholders in the process of understanding and developing requirements to help you create an effective solution.
Create a Clear Executive Hand-offA successful implementation depends on a crystal-clear vision and strategy to unify your team around. In our experience, a single meeting between executive sponsors and key stakeholders can help to paint a picture of a preferred future. There, your team will hear the “why” behind the project, what your organization is trying to achieve, and the high-level outcomes.
Establish Requirements-Gathering MeetingsThe more intentional you are in gathering requirements in focused meetings before implementation, the more your solution will be tailored to your organization’s needs. While this seems obvious, many teams get caught up in the pressures of hitting a quick deadline and miss it. By rushing this step, you lose time through rework and changes later on in the project. We typically suggest taking two to three weeks for this step.
Set Goals and Outcomes It’s critical that you create clear goals and outcomes so you can measure success later. To help you see how far you have come, begin by mining for pre-metrics to provide a post-implementation comparison point. Keep in mind that your outcomes should support both metrics and the overall user experience.
If your organization has struggled to implement ServiceNow modules, or if you’re looking to avoid some of the pitfalls others have struggled with, reach out to one of our specialized team members. With decades of experience and our proven process, we can help you deliver a successful outcome with quick time-to-value, the right way.
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