We’ve been OCM’ed!

Technical what…?

Picture yourself in, let’s say, 2014. ServiceNow is running Eureka, there is a brand-new look and feel, and your customer has very specific needs, not included in the baseline, that can easily be satisfied with a few technical adjustments. Back then, ServiceNow was mainly an ITSM platform which was very flexible. It was very easy to create new fields, new business rules and workflows. Why not? Customer is happy.

Then, ServiceNow started to grow very quickly. Take a look at the well-known official product/release graphs! It is a rapidly growing curve! Some features were enhanced, reworked, retired… in a few years, your once fancy development that made your customer so happy are currently causing you a nightmare…

You’re trying to upgrade to Helsinki (it is the best option), and there is a massive collision in a Script Include. ServiceNow has changed the approach to deal with a key functional requirement. ServiceNow’s new idea is excellent but… it does not fit with your customer’s wishes formulated ‘only’ 2 years ago…

You’ve been working on the upgrade for a few weeks and there’s a lot of pressure. And of course, the possibility of establishing a development freeze was immediately rejected by the customer, the show must go on, these activities cannot be postponed since there are strict deadlines that cannot be shifted because of the upgrade… The upgrade and the backlog must be tracked in parallel with extreme care to ensure no service disruptions… Despite explaining to the customer that these collisions need to be analysed in depth, with more time, potential risks and alternatives, they keep pushing to finish the upgrade according to the agreed plan. You feel stuck between a rock and a hard place… Fine, let’s skip the updates and remain with our custom version, the customer has made an informed decision and accepted the risk.

That’s living in the past. You start to blame your past-self and see things from a different angle. You now are starting to get familiar with the concept of technical debt.

Back to square one

A couple more years pass. You’ve moved on to another project and you are working with another customer with a very old instance that was highly customized and unstable. This new customer is starting over with the ServiceNow implementation… from scratch! What? What if my former customer is doing the same thing right now? Trashing all these amazing features that once made them so happy… well, it is the best decision they could make right now… Unfortunately, you had to see it through your own eyes.

We need to accept that ServiceNow – as a product – has evolved a lot over the years, it has somehow “grown up”. If ServiceNow was a human being, we could say this person is old enough to make decisions, get a driving license and get a job. It is adult enough to tell us: “Listen, this is the way I am designed to work, and you should respect it”. Everything is different now.

Of course, ServiceNow – as a company – has always been a witness to this effect. Customers also needed to go through a maturity process in their digital transformation journey and the company was aware that many customers were pushing implementers to “bend the tool”. It was sometimes difficult to push back because the tool was so flexible that it was tempting to adapt each and every business rule or script to make your customer happy, a short-term win. And of course, as implementers, we shouldn’t have been reckless, and we should have tried to push harder against that. We should’ve been able to foresee the consequences back then and provide better advice to the customer. ServiceNow – as a company – understand it. They empathize. They have a plan!

Different perspectives of OCM

Organizational Change Management (OCM) is key to ensure a project’s success. Studies have shown that ROI can vary drastically depending on how effective OCM is implemented through the project’s lifetime.

In a ServiceNow project it is based on ensuring utilization of the platform, adoption of processes and proficiency with the tool. You can be given the best car in the market with loads of sensors, a very efficient engine and AI-based assistance…, but you cannot leverage its possibilities if you are not comfortable driving it or if you do not understand why you should drive a fancy state of the art race car instead of your day-by-day runabout.

Implementing ServiceNow is no different. Here, utilization, adoption and proficiency can be linked to the best practices and principles that determine how things should be done aligned with the way ServiceNow was designed to work. In other words, without generating technical debt caused by not following these practices and principles and ensuring a successful ServiceNow implementation.

Ensuring success when managing change

How can a successful OCM Program be implemented? We’re human after all. We need to be convinced, and the most effective way of convincing others is by connecting with them as human beings… using human beings. Just focusing on the need for the change might not be effective and the change might not be accepted right away. There is a very basic human sense of fear of the unknown, risk of losing power, looking incompetent or less productive and being unable to meet deadlines in the future. Some individuals might react negatively, with avoidance or indifference. The team must have a profound wish to apply the change and own it. They must be inspired in order to challenge their deepest beliefs and behaviours because these are the most difficult to reach. “We have always done things this way” is the most dangerous sentence in this context and it takes a lot of time to be removed from the equation.

Therefore, in order to be successful with the OCM Program, the benefits must be demonstrated to help the team understand why the new approach is better, how it will help them achieve their goals optimally, and why the change is being made. With time, progressively. Giving them guidelines to get over fear and resistance. Helping them slowly get out of their comfort zone… Selecting champion enablers within their organizations who will be listened to, who will gather continuous feedback and who will influence their colleagues to embrace the change. 

In a ServiceNow project this could mean, for example, showcasing the long-term benefits of using the platform as the unique point of contact to report incidents and dropping the use of emails outside the system. This allows trending analysis, load balancing, ability to find bottlenecks and to provide a better service, amongst many others...

In a ServiceNow implementation, as implementers, it means driving our own consultants towards best-practice-compliant technical designs, convincing that customizing has consequences, giving them resources and guidance to communicate this message effectively to the customer and, as a general rule, thinking long-term.

As ServiceNow developers, analysts, architects, we used to feel great in our comfort zone making customers happy by looking at short-term technical wins. And let’s be honest, it felt really good being able to do such amazing things with the platform. How can you get people out of their comfort zone then? Again, by convincing them, connecting with them as human beings. Selecting champion enablers, individuals in their organizations that can spread the message: think twice before you customize – ensure business value exceeds your technical debt. That is the message we’ve been selected to communicate to our community. 

CMAs mission with the ecosystem

Well, that’s clever, isn’t it? We, ServiceNow Certified Master Architects… (CMA) have an extra mission! The ServiceNow ecosystem has been OCM’ed!!! We have the responsibility to convince our community of the most efficient and effective way forward, and that is the program’s long-term value. To understand that the journey has led to a moment where the level of maturity requires implementers to take responsibility in the way complexity is dealt with. To be a trusted advisor that will ensure a successful implementation of ServiceNow today, tomorrow and in many years ahead:

·     Deliver best practice guidance to customers

·     Apply advanced guiding techniques through advisory workshops with customers

·     Design solutions that make the world of work better for your customers without generating technical debt and future risks or maintenance costs.

We are the selected ServiceNow Champion Enablers, and this is part of our mission within our own organisations, communities and teams. A mission, not for our customers, but for our own peers and the entire ServiceNow ecosystem!

Would you like to know more about the Certified Master Architect Program? Check this link: CMA Program Portal