3 Pitfalls to Avoid on Your ServiceNow Journey

Organizations that purchase and implement ServiceNow are embarking on a journey. For those who currently use ServiceNow this statement may be obvious, but for those considering the platform for the first time this may be a new thought for you. The real question for platform owners and executive sponsors to consider is: What will the ServiceNow journey be like for our organization?

The journey should be an enjoyable one full of stories around increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving experience. Unfortunately, for some organizations the journey is not so enjoyable and is filled with stories of burgeoning backlogs, difficulty demonstrating ROI and frustrated stakeholders.

The good news is that your success on your journey is largely in your control. In my experience, organizations that are less successful will tend to get caught in pitfalls that have little to do with the technical and are 100% avoidable. Here are three that are always at the top of the list:

Pitfall #1 -- Not aligning the ServiceNow roadmap to organizational priorities and desired outcomes. 

This lack of strategic alignment for what is being implemented on the platform opens the door for wasting time and resources on things that matter very little to your business. Additionally, it makes it incredibly difficult to demonstrate real business value for the investment the organization is making in the platform.

Pitfall #2 -- Not taking the time to establish lean platform governance. 

When technical governance does not exist, you will quickly accumulate technical debt that ultimately slows down the delivery of new value on the platform. When strategic governance and demand/delivery governance does not exist you lose the ability to determine what is most important on a growing backlog and your delivery pipeline becomes clogged with work in progress.

Pitfall #3 -- Not adequately resourcing platform operations and ongoing development.

When a ServiceNow team is too small or does not have the right skills it will quickly degrade your ability to deliver ongoing value for the organization. If your ServiceNow team is an afterthought, you can plan on at least a year of struggling to get out of the mess that ensues.

Final Thoughts:

In order to keep this article a quick read for you, I didn't take the time to go deep on these common pitfalls. If you want help unpacking them further and determining what to do about them consider reaching out to Crossfuze. The thing to take away is that these pitfalls and the bad outcomes related to them are all avoidable. It does take intentional effort to put the right things into place, but you can do it and it will allow you to have a more successful ServiceNow journey.