ServiceNow PPM Summary
Plugin: PPM Standard
PPM Applications
- Demand, Project, Program, Portfolio, Resource, Ideas and Timecard
Overview
Role:
- project_manager
- sn_ppm_read: read-only access to PPM
- it_demand_manager and it_demand_user
Domain separation: PPM is domain separated with few limitations
ServiceNow PPM integrates with Financial Management and Project Portfolio Management
- Via this, determine the overall cost for demands and project, cost of resource requirements and track the actual amount spent vs the approved budget
Applications within PPM:
- Portfolio management, Program Management, Project Management, Demand Management, Innovation Management, Resource Management, Time Card and Fiscal Calendar
Plugins
- For PMO dashboard for PPM activate the Performance Analytics Content Pack - PPM standard
- For Investment Funding, activate the Investment Funding for PPM Plugin. This plugin adds investment_user role to the following roles: (project_manager, demand_manager, portfolio_manager, program_manager)
Budget currencies
- specify a base currency or reporting currency via the ServiceNow system properties
- Budget plan and Budget plan items can have their own currencies, however, Budget plan item currency is converted to Budget plan currency which is then eventually converted to reporting currency.
- During forecasting PPM application will convert these currencies to the base or reporting currencies
Budget reference rates: These are the exchange rates between currencies and they are valid for a certain time period. We need to know that the currency support is for budget only and not for allocations
Business stakeholder
- This role is for APM, ITFM and PPM
- Allows them to read records from the table that are used for the approval of demand and timecards.
Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM
- Helps us to evaluate the strategic value of organization projects and demands and how they are being used to achieve the organization strategic goals
- We can allocate multiple strategies and goals for demand and project or allocate a percentage
- PPM standard must be installed before we can install Strategic spend
- Installed from the ServiceNow store
- It allows us to allocate or modify strategy and goal percentage for a project
- Navigate to a project, and update in the related list (Strategy allocations / Goal allocations)
- Post that, click on the related list Recalculate Strategy and Goal Allocation
- Repeat the same exercise for Demand
- Visualize this via Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM Dashboard
- This dashboard allows us to check how our projects are aligned to Organization strategies over time and then determine the financial performance via analyzing total expenses, department and Business unit spending etc
Reporting solutions
- Performance Analytics Content Pack - PPM Standard Plugin
- PMO dashboard which can be accessed via Portfolio Dashboard, Program Dashboard, PMO Dashboard, Time Sheet Dashboard
Tables
- project table is pm_project
- demand table is dm_demand
- story rm_story
- currencies fx_currency
- demand stakeholders dmn_m2m_demand_stakeholder
PMO Dashboard
- comprehensive reports for portfolio and program managers
- we have a project health tab
Time Sheet Dashboard
- for time card approvers and time card users
- We can create new projects via Project > Create New or Project workbench> New Project
- After the project is created, add phases to the project via the Project workbench
- Then add a waterfall phase or test phase for a project
- Then add milestones to a project from the project workbench
- Set up manual testing for which we have several stages
- Create a test plan
- Add test cases to the test plan
- Create a test phase
- Add a test plan to a test phase
- Add test cases to the testers
- Notify testers to start testing
- Testers perform the test and submit the result
- Monitor the testing progress
- Testing sign off
- First, set up a development group (agile group, add members, determine capacity)
- Then create sprints
- Then create a new project
- Open the existing project
- Add phase to the project from the project workbench (agile phase or test phase)
- Add more details to the project from the project workbench
- Add milestones to a project from the project workbench
- Plan a sprint
- Set up a testing process
Test 2.0 Integration with PPM
Agile Development 2.0 integration with PPM
- combination of Agile and waterfall project management and development
Define an agile group
- Agile Development > Groups
- via related links, we can create a sprint, go to sprint planning and group velocity
Add group members
Decide the capacity of the group
Convert release team to an agile group
- only applicable if upgraded from Agile Development 1.0 to Agile Development 2.0
Create a sprint
- provide a description, planned start and end date, group capacity
Create multiple sprints
- Use create sprint from the related link on the Group
- enter the number of sprints to be created
Assign a group to a project
- Do it via project workbench
- Project can have multiple development phases
- Each development phase can have a group assigned to it
Create stories
- Stories can be associated with a project but it is not mandatory
- If the project has only one phase and then the story automatically gets assigned to that phase
- one-off stories can be created without the project/product, it only needs a short description and group
Manage stories
- Manage stories for a group from the project workbench
- Manage stories button displays the backlog for the currently selected project
Plan sprints
- Via Sprint Planning Tab
- Open the desired group, click on the related link Sprint Planning
- We get an Agile board, Sprint Planning tab
- Re-arranging stories in the backlog changes the ranking of stories
- Ranks are stored in the global_rank column in the story rm_story table
- When we move a story within a backlog, its ranking might change but the position in the backlog remains the same
- We can start/complete the sprint via the button
Track Progress
- via Project Workbench timeline
- When stories are completed, the story points and status gets rolled up to sprint and project phase
- Project phase gets rolled up to the project
Demand Management
- capture, centralize, assess strategic and operational demands
- demand manager assess the ideas via the idea portal or ideation module and promote feasible ones to demand
- demand life cycle is like this: idea to demand then to project/enhancement/change/defect
- we can create demand tasks for initial feasibility check or to delegate activities
- demand tasks can be assigned to business analysts or an appropriate group
- the assigned resource or group creates a cost/resource plan to help the demand manager qualify the demand
Basics of demand management
- need to plan, create stakeholders, assessment categories and create bubble charts
- assess ideas and promote ideas to demand
- add details to demand, via demand tasks, stakeholders and assessments, evaluate and qualify demand
- use demand workbench to compare and assess demands and promote demands to projects/enhancements/changes or defects
Demand management key terms
- Metric: Trait or value to evaluate demand / assessable records. Can have subjective/objective values
- Metric type: In this case it is demand
- Metric category: ex: return on investment, cost etc
Planning for Demand management
- Roles, Portfolios, Stakeholders, Assessment, Resource plans, Enhancement and defect requests
- Bubble chart definitions: Identify metrics that are important to stakeholders, department and organization, use them to create a bubble chart and visually compare demands
Demand management process flow
- Submit ideas that can be done by any user via service catalog or record producer
- Creating demands which can be done by demand managers and demand users
- Add details to demands by the Demand manager via demand tasks, stakeholders, requirements, risks, decisions, resource plans
- Assess demands by decision-makers using assessment results and demand backlog to determine which demand to approve or reject
- Complete demands
Multicurrency in Demand management
- makes it easier to manage and track demands from any location
- we can monitor and track the financials of demands in one currency and spend the budget in a different currency such as functional currency or regional currency
- Activate the PPM Standard Multicurrency plugin
- After activating the plugin specify your currency preference for managing demand financials
- We can select a functional currency, regional currency or local currency
Demand currency view
- in addition to the default view, the demand currency view enables us to view the multicurrency fields
Multicurrency in Demand Task
Select Demand Currency Preference
- Project Administration > Settings > Preferences-Project
- We can manage demands in functional currency: Select Follow Functional currency
- Manage demands in the same currency as project: Select Drive project currency
- Manage demands and projects in different currencies: Select Flexi option
Enable Demand currency view
Multicurrency fields in demand related forms
- we observe the multicurrency fields in the financial section of the forms
Allocate demand budget in-demand currency
- set the capital expense and operating expense budgets in demand or functional currency
- sum of CAPEX and OPEX budgets is calculated as the total budget in-demand currency
- Demand > Select the demand and Create Demand Budget related link
Cost plan updates and cost recalculation in-demand currency
Benefit plan updates and recalculation in-demand currency
Quick start tests for Multicurrency in Demand management
Upgrade existing demands
- can be done via scheduled jobs to upgrade existing or active demands after activating PPM Standard Multicurrency
Set up demand management
a) Plan for DM
b) Populate the stakeholder registry
c) View the assessment metric category
d) Configure a widget for the financial metrics of a demand
e) Configure demand workbench
Plan for DM
- Roles: who has it_demand_manager role and it_demand_user roles
- Portfolios: how will you group/categorize demands, have a user it_project_manager who will create portfolios based on those groupings
- Stakeholders: with domain knowledge who will evaluate based on each portfolio, who will receive assessments or be demand approvers
- Assessments: to facilitate the information gathering process. Define metric categories and assessment metrics and distribute them to an appropriate audience
- Resource plan: to understand time and resource costs associated with the demand, It needs a resource management application
- Enhancement and defect requests requires Agile Development to be active
Populate the stakeholder registry
- Project administration > Settings > Stakeholders
- Fields: Number, User, Portfolio, Level of interest, Assessment recipient, Approver, Influence, Engagement, Function
View an assessment metric category
- used to generate the bubble charts on-demand workbench that helps to visually assess the demands
- for assessment metric type = Demand we have five default assessment metric categories/assessment metrics
- Project administration > Settings > Assessment metric categories
Assessment metric categories
- Size
- Strategic alignment
- Risk
- ROI
- Cost
Configure a widget for the financial metrics of a demand
- Project administration > Widgets > New
- Then we associate that widget to the demand table via the widget association related list
Configure Demand Workbench
- to configure parameters such as bubble chart
Demand Workbench
- central location for viewing and assessing business demands
- it is split into two panes. The top pane presents an interactive bubble chart, bottom pane displays details in a list view
- By default, it shows demands screened by stakeholders and qualified by the demand manager
- We can use a demand workbench to
a) View, evaluate and update demands
b) Create demands
c) Create artefacts from demands like projects, enhancement, defect, changes
Demand workbench bubble chart
- use bubble charts to visualize, compare and evaluate relative standings of demand in 3 categories
- risk, value and size
- x-axis represent the risk of a demand, y represents the value and z represents the size
- demands are plotted as circles that vary according to the size of the demand
- all 3 measurements are based on values between 1-10
- the bubble chart contains 4 quadrants with each quadrant representing value vs risk tradeoff for the demand
- upper left quadrant labelled resource contains demands with high value and low risk, they are shown in green colour
- lower left and upper right quadrant labelled Consider contains demands that require further evaluation
- lower left quadrant contains demands of low risk and low value, upper right contains demand with high risk and high value, they are shown in orange colour
- lower right is labelled re-evaluate contains demand with low value and high risk
Demand workbench list view
- lower pane displays the list of demands
- it displays 20 demands at a time
- interactive bubble chart is updated whenever you change demand in the list view
Use demand management
- users can create, view and modify demand with DM application
- we can approve demands and create artefacts like a project, change, enhancement, defect
- the type of artefact created from demand depends on the category and type fields on-demand form
Demand management life cycle
- create a demand
- View a list of demands
- enhance a demand
- assessing a demand
- create an artefact
- all users can submit ideas from the Service catalog or from the Ideas module in Self-service
2. Assess demands
- DM comes with 2 demand visualization tools to help in demand assessment. Demand workbench and Roadmap
- Demand workbench
- Using the roadmap: shows all demands in the active state, chose between 2d and 3d view, filter demands by portfolio, etc
3. Demand Tasks
- unit of work created within a demand to break down initial planning activities before converting the demand to project, change, enhancement or defect
- demand tasks to delegate activities that are helpful for assessing the feasibility of a demand
- assign resources for a demand task using the assigned to, additional assignee list, assignment group
- resource plans are not associated with the demand by default
- actual effort of the work performed on the demand task is derived from the time card
4. Actual cost and effort calculation for a demand and demand task
-based on the approved time card and hourly rate for the resources
- the actual cost and actual effort for the demand remain with the demand and are not transferred to the project created from the demand even if we manually associate a resource plan with the demand
5. Create a demand
- to capture your strategic and operational demands
- demand> create new
- can we help you > create a new demand
- self service > demands > create new
Fields
- type of demand: project, enhancement, story, epic, SAFe story, SAFe feature, SAFe epic
Create a new qualified demand
- demand manager can create new qualified demand from the demand workbench list view
Create a demand task
-
Submit a time card for a demand task
- timesheets > timesheet portal
Create an artefact from a demand
- when we create a demand we specify a category and type for that demand, they determine the artefact that we can create from a demand
Create a demand benefit plan
- captures the potential benefits accrued by demand when the demand is executed
Create a demand cost plan
- captures the cost of demands
View the financial summary of cost and benefit plans
- enables us to assess the progress of the demand and track financial changes and their impact on the demand over a period
Create an expense line for a demand
- it is cost associated with a specific source, such as user, fixed asset, ci
Create and manage resource plan for a demand
- as a resource requestor find the availability of the resources and create and manage the resource plans for the demand
- resource plan page has 2 sections,. Resource grid and Resource finder
Recalculate costs of resource plans of a demand
- recalculate the costs whenever the hourly rates change in the associated rate model
Allocate budget to demand
- set the budget according to the fiscal years
Create a baseline of a demand
- financial baseline of a demand that captures benefit and financial metric information at a particular moment in time
Compare financial baseline of a demand
- compare baselines to review the variances in the financial data of demand and see what changed
View demands
- Demand workbench
- Demands list
- The stage field displays the status or progress of a demand
View an artefact created from a demand
- Demand workbench > right-click a bubble that has an associated artefact and the click view
View a demand summary
- point to a bubble in the demand workbench bubble chart to display the summary of the demand information
- add demand tasks, add stakeholders, add requirements, add resource plans
7. RIDAC (Risk, Issue, Decision, Action, Request changes)
- create a risk record for your demand that we can convert to other records during the demand lifecycle to track issues and to avoid manually copy relevant details in related records
- once you have a risk record we can convert that record into related records such as issues, actions or decisions
a) Add risks for a demand
- to identify, analyze and prioritize, plan and track a risk during any phase of the demand life cycle
- ex incorrect estimate of financial outlay, resource assignments can cause schedule slippage
- recording risks ensures that decision-makers have all relevant information when assessing a demand
- Demand > Risk related lists
b) Configure custom risk rank and risk value for a demand
- like Hign-Medium, Medium-Low, Absolute-low to rate the impact and probability factors for a risk
- Degree of risk: Absolute, High, Medium, Low based on the impact and probability factors of a risk
- Value in the probability is multiplied by the value of the Impact field to generate the value for the Risk rank and corresponding Risk value in the risk form
- Project Administration > Settings > Risk value lookup
c) Add issues for a demand
- via related list issue in a demand
d) Add decisions for a demand
- via related list Decisions in a demand
e) Add actions for a demand
f) Add Request for Changes to a demand
g) Convert one RIDAC record to another for a demand
h) Associate existing RIDAC records for a demand
8. Reset a demand to the Draft state
- can be set back to the Draft state from any demand states or until an artefact such as project, enhancement, defect, change is created from the demand
- after resetting, all score values in Assessment data are reset to default
- all active assessments for the demand are cancelled, new assessments are triggered when the demand moves to the Screening state and if the assessment required is set to true
- all associate resource plans with no actual hours reported are moved to planning state
9. Delete demands
- can be deleted only when it is Pending state
- role: it_demand_manager or it_demand_user
- all data related to demand such as risks, demand tasks, requirements, decisions are deleted but not stakeholders
- if the project is associated, the reference is removed but the project is not deleted
10. Move and resize a demand
- As the DM one can move and resize bubbles in the bubble chart, this updates the corresponding demands in the list view
- clicking or dragging demand left-right along the horizontal axis decreases or increases the risk of the demand
- Along horizontal or y-axis increase or decreases the value of the demand
- clicking a bubble opens a sizing window where we can increase or decrease the size of the bubble
11. Stage fields
- Stage field on the idealist displays the current state of an idea as it moves through the demand lifecycle
- stage field is a display-only field and cannot be searched or sorted
- a new idea: submitted state. accepted idea: accepted state. deferred idea: skipped state
12. Composite fields
- combines information from 2 fields in a table to form a single field
- support level is basic
Domain separation and Service Portfolio Management
- support level is basic
Innovation management
- Ideas application, Idea portal accelerates and organizes idea gathering evaluation selection and execution
- Idea manager or demand manager evaluates submitted ideas and promote ideas to demands, epics, features or stories
Maintain separate data storage and control access
- stores ideas belonging to a different department, product or BU separately
- store and organize ideas, enable voting, for large organization configure different portals, categories, for example, HR, IT and Support
- control access, allowing only relevant users to access the data
Organize idea submission by categories
- all ideas submitted through the idea portal must be associated with at least one idea category
Submit, view and subscribe to ideas
Collaborate on ideas
- with other submitters and stakeholders
Manage and evaluate ideas
- idea manager reviews submitted ideas. if needed requests more information and then choose to accept or reject the idea.
- number of votes on an idea helps in assessing the popularity of the demand and idea
- convert the accepted ideas to a demand, epic, story or feature
- use options like Epic, SAFe epic etc
Migrating from the legacy ideas application to idea portal
- We need to take care of the following
a) Idea states
b) Idea categories
c) Converting ideas to demands or project or stories, initiatives and epics
d) Business rules
e) Navigation for legacy idea application
Idea portal administration
- Idea portal enables end-users to view, submit, filter, sort, comment and vote on ideas
- Idea manager uses the idea portal to review, evaluate, collaborate and manage ideas
- Idea admin configure idea module, maps idea categories, adds navigation to the idea portal page
- Idea portal retrieves data from the Idea module
- Configure separate idea modules for your product, department, or BU
- Identify the following
a) Idea table, Idea module, Idea categories, Navigation to the Idea portal page
Create an Idea module
- Idea module defines the ideas and categories that are displayed on the Idea portal
- Use idea module to store and group ideas and define categories based on the product, department or BU
- Ideas > Settings > Idea Module > New
- Fields: Module name, Module id, Idea table, Enable downvote, Active, category limit
- Moduleid: if you use hr as the Module Id, the URL to access the Idea Portal would look like the following example: /idea/?id=ideas_list&sysparm_module_id=hr
Define new idea categories
- Default idea category im_category stores user-defined idea categories
- define new idea categories, custom idea categories, hierarchy of idea categories
- we can use multiple idea categories but we can map only one category table with an idea module
- Idea > Idea category > New
Configure idea categories
- configuring idea categories with the idea module is required to fetch the list of categories in the idea portal
- static categories use the idea category im_category to configure the mapping between idea module and idea category table
- use existing product or department table to define dynamic idea categories. These categories are derived from the specific columns and fields of the parent table
- we can map only one category table with the idea module
- Idea > Idea category Config > New
- Field: category table, category field ,Parent field
Idea portal navigation
- Configure idea portal URL to enable access to the idea portal from the application navigator
- enable access to idea portal module using the application menus module
- create a module
- set the link type field as URL(from arguments), use the module id as a parameter to specify the idea module
Idea portal
- central location to collate, curate and promote ideas into demand, project, epic, or story
- view submit, vote and subscribe to ideas
- collaborate using comments to discuss and exchange information on ideas
- subscribe to an idea receive a notification and keep them informed about its status and progress
- see the details, ask or answer questions
- Idea and demand manager use the idea portal to manage submitted ideas, review. assess the popularity and demand of an idea from the number of votes
a) submit an idea
- idea for a product, feature, enhancement, change in the idea portal
- select categories relevant to the idea
- new ideas are created in the submitted state
- ideas > idea portal > create an idea
- field: title, category, description
b)view filter and sort ideas
- based on idea state, category or date
- we can view: title, number of votes, name of submitter, age, current state, category
- Idea portal > My ideas or All Ideas
c) Collaborate on ideas
- via comment option to discuss ideas and exchange information
- up vote or down vote an idea to register your level of interest
- subscribe an idea to track its progress
- we cannot comment, vote for ideas that are in the completed, unlikely to implement, duplicate, already exists state
- Idea > Idea portal
- post comment, reply to a comment, edit/delete your comment, vote on an idea, subscribe
d) manage ideas
- idea manager manage submitted ideas by reviewing them, making modifications or deleting outdated ones, identifying duplicates
- change the state of an idea to reflect its status
e) evaluate an idea
- review submitted ideas and then accept or reject them
- if an idea cannot be implemented right away, move the idea to backlog and pick it up later
- accept the ideas that are feasible for implementation and create a task like demand, project, story from it
- Idea idea portal
- action: accept, request more information, reject, close an idea when implemented
f) create a task for an idea
- create a task for planning and developing an accepted idea
- tasks like: demand, project, epic, story, safe epic, safe feature, safe story
Idea manager dashboard
- summary views of idea metrics and trends
- install idea manager dashboard from ServiceNow store
- use idea manager dashboard also for uses with sn_ppm_read roles
Resource management
1. Roles
- resource_user
2. Resource plan (revise in SN Doc)
-
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