Service Catalog Implementation Best Practices

When it comes to change people have default tendency to be *reluctant* and we all know it is "universal".

The primary goal of this article is to pen down some of the Best Practices and methodology which I experienced and applied in one of my recent implementation of Service Catalog.

I have divided my list between things that the Business/Project Management should be considering, as well as what the Developers should be doing.

PM Best Practices

1. Strategy:

• Determine your Goal, be clear and specific between the need and requirements. Choose the one's which will bring value to the system. Don't get into lift and shift if you are migrating from a legacy system.....it is very easy to get lost between the notion of the majority " We used to work like this before...or system is to work like this before".

• Adopt Agile (Iteration based) model. No need to get every feature of every item out on the first pass. Slow and steady wins the race.

• As an addition to the previous point, identify 5 to 10 services/items that are critical to the success of the project. Don’t try to tackle all the items before go-live.

• Get required buy in from C-level executives and stakeholders in the business, and your primary users …because end of the day they are the ones who use this day in and day out.

• Keep it Simple and go with OOB as much as possible.

• Identify your Key Performance Indicators early. Put your SLAs, Metrics, etc. in place at the beginning.

• Very Important! build and document your communication plan in detail. No last minute surprises.

2. Design:

• Design it right the first time, many users will hate to come back if it is too complicated.

• Keep it simple, ask only questions (via variables) that need to be asked. Don’t just copy a form/item from the old system that was created 10 years ago

• Make sure that you have right people in the design room. The key here is to make sure that the items will contain the essential information needed to deliver the requested item.

• Design your navigation right. Consider how your users will access these items.

Technical Best Practices

Development:

• Naming, think about the end user experience while naming your catalog items. Use terminology which user know and understands. Don’t use your favorite IT jargon.

• Variables, name your variables based on a standard. Keep then short and to the point. Put important variables on the top of the form. If you some vague questions, please add some tool tips. Group commonly used variable to a Variable set, for re purposing.

• For Reference fields use the ref_auto_completer Attribute in order to define the searchable/visible fields to auto complete.

• Workflow, avoid combining workflows to multiple items (unless it is a generic item); sooner or later you need to break them out to take different paths. Be careful when using the “Join” utility/activity: this allows the workflow to wait for multiple/simultaneous activities to complete before continuing. If there are “conditional” tasks that never execute (using IF condition activities) then the workflow Join will keep the workflow in a “stuck” state.

• Make an effort not to have a lot of UI Policy Actions that apply when the condition is EMPTY (running on load), the more fields the system has to go through to Hide, etc. the longer the form takes to load

• Reporting Requirements, reporting on requested item is not very pretty. Even creating a database view may not help. So, plan your requirement in advance.

4. Communication and Training

• Get your Steering Committee in place and include all Key players and last-minute Whistle Blowers in the group

• Have regular update calls with your steering committee

• Get your test cases and test results on time

• Leave no stones unturned, build an excellent training library

• Don’t get over burn yourself…...learn to delegate

#ServiceNow #ServiceCatalog #BestPractice