ServiceNow APM CIS - Madrid
Role required for APM Portal
sn_apm.apm_analyst
" Strategic Outcomes
"- Reduce technical debt and technical risk - Rationalize application portfolio and reduce IT costs - Optimize application maintenance investments - Prioritize new investments to enhance critical business capabilities
" Logistics
Review the customer statement of work (SOW) to confirm workshop details as already agreed upon by all parties. Invitations and travel arrangements should also be made with these SOW details in mind, including: how many days have been allocated to the workshop, what are the approved budgets, who are the key resources to invite, etc.
Problem: There are too many business apps in the enterprise
Use the objective assessments to rationalize your application portfolio. Decide which application to retire, replace or invest in.
Business Planner:
com.snc.apm.business_planner
" Bubble Chart widget for Service Portal:
com.snc.sp_workbench_widgets
" Concerns: Head of Applications
"- How do I prioritize and communicate investment needed in application support, replacement and retirement? - How do I meet increasing demand for new capabilities? Do I build new applications?
Operational Outcomes
"- Trusted source for application portfolio - Visibility into application stability using incident and change activity - Understand application complexity using infrastructure mapping - Reduce resolution time for application-related issues using up-to-date mapping
" 3 Problems
"1. Too many applications to maintain and support 2. Technical Gaps supporting business capabilities 3. Identifying Technology Risks (What's end of life?)
" Two challenges
"1. lots of siloed working between multiple teams 2. lots of tools to track those application portfolios
Which roles are automatically added with the activation of Application Portfolio Management?
"APM User (sn_apm.apm_user) APM Admin (sn_apm.apm_admin APM Analyst (sn_apm.apm_analyst)
Integration with NOW Platform
"APM gathers information from stakeholders by using surveys and assessments. Some examples include: Customer satisfaction survey (CSAT) Business value assessment
" Periodic data certification
"APM has an out-of-the-box capability to assign data certification tasks to application owners. Using this feature, application owners get assigned tasks at a set frequency to validate application information.
Integration with NOW SAM
"APM interfaces with Software Asset Management (SAM) to leverage: Software model data License asset data Lifecycle data
Integration with NOW ITOM
"APM uses ServiceNow's infrastructure to pull in valuable information: Application Services Infrastructure Cis
Three dashboards are included with APM:
"Application Landscape (Application Portfolio Management > Application Portfolio Analysis > Landscape Analysis) Application Assessments (Application Portfolio Management > Application Portfolio Analysis > Dashboard) Application 360 (Application Portfolio Management > Application Portfolio Analysis > Application 360)
" APM Sub-Menus
"Application Portfolio Application Portfolio Analysis Application Ratings Capability Ratings Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) Administration
" IT Leadership
"Application investments to support mission-critical capabilities Technical debt and Application rationalization
What is Application Portfolio Management?
"Application portfolio management (APM) is a framework for managing enterprise Business Applications and software-based services. APM provides management with an inventory of the company's software applications and metrics to illustrate the business benefits of each application. An APM system uses indicators and a scoring profile for generating reports about the value of each application and the health of the IT infrastructure as a whole. By gathering metrics like an application's age, how often it's used, the cost it takes to maintain it and its interrelationships with other applications, a manager can use more than just an educated guess to decide whether or not a particular application should be kept, updated, retired or replaced.
" Why companies use APM?
"Application portfolio management is used to gain a comprehensive understanding of the applications within your organization, so you can identify redundancies and rationalization initiatives, decrease budgetary costs, manage business capabilities, and track technology lifecycles.
" IT Operations
"Application stability; high incident counts Up-to-date application to infrastructure mapping
" Success Drivers
"Applications that support goals Keeping costs under control Simplicity Low security risk Fast change
" APM Rationalization - Take Action
"At this stage, you have a detailed analysis of a set of target applications, and you are aware of the benefits that will result from the discovered recommendations. You now use the Project Portfolio Suite to take the final decisions of what projects to fund, and produce a roadmap of projects, taking into consideration the demand and supply of resources.
" APM Rationalization - Decide
"At this stage, you have completed the Application Portfolio Analysis and can now propose the appropriate actions to transform the ""Current State"" to the desired ""Future State"" using Transitional Architecture(s). When this process is complete, you are able to recommend actions to take for each application: replacement, retirement, consolidation, upgrade, modernize, etc.
Additional Functionality
(all subsequent releases), Expand scope and/or expand capability. Release advanced functionality only when the baseline functionality has been tested and accepted.
" Enterprise Architects
"Business capabilities supported by applications Technology standards and lifecycle plans
" Application Owner
"Business value and health of applications Prioritization of maintenance and upgrade $'s
" Business Planning Portal: Business Units
"Click View to see a list of business units within your organization, and Create to create new business units. Business units are parts of your organization that are in charge of certain operations, such as Finance, HR, etc. Business units typically comprise departments and are associated with a company. In this example, you see business units being used to designate geographic locations as well.
" Business Planning Portal: No. of Capabilities - View
"Click View to see the list of business planning capabilities defined for your enterprise. Click Create to create new capabilities. Some examples of business planning capabilities are things like ""Perform quality testing"" and ""Review market performance."" The list is clickable, so you can drill down into each capability as needed.
" Business Planning Portal: No. of Goals
"Click View to view a list of goals that have been created to achieve your business plan(s). Click Create to create new goals. You can relate goals to many enterprise and business unit strategies. Similarly, more than one enterprise and business unit strategy can be related to more than one goal. Clicking a goal in the list allows you to view it in more detail and update its status.
Business Planning Portal: Strategies
"Clicking View takes you to a list of Business Planning Strategic objectives. Clicking Create allows you to create new strategic objectives. There are two categories of strategies: • Enterprise Strategies • Business Unit Strategies Enterprise Strategies are higher level strategies '^ and Business Unit Strategies are tower level strategies. Business Unit Strategies are often child elements to Enterprise Strategies. Strategies can also be assigned to goals.
" APM Portal: Notifications
"Clicking a notification here opens the related v data certification schedule instance to view the record details. This allows you to check data integrity directly, and to create tasks for owners to address. This section allows you to view the results of desired and scripted audits, the number of software models that face high and moderate risks expiring on the current date and in the next 90 days, and the pending certification instances that are open and have not been completed 100%
" APM Portal: Application Architecture - Analyze
"Clicking on the Analyze link opens a group analysis page. From here you can click on individual categories to analyze similar applications. In this example, the user is comparing Human Capital Management solutions via a bubble chart. Note: This page is also available by navigating to Application Portfolio Management > Application Portfolio Analysis > Analyze.
" APM Portal: Application Architecture - Application
"Clicking on the Application link opens a list of applications under management. You can sort the list by various parameters, like Application type, as seen here. Note: This list is also available by navigating to Application Portfolio Management > Application Portfolio > All Business Applications.
" APM Portal: Application Architecture - Landscape
"Clicking on the Landscape link opens the Landscape Analysis dashboard in another tab. The dashboards give you a quick overview of your application universe, allowing you to sort and filter on a number of different criteria. The charts are also ""live linked"" to the underlying data, allowing you to ""click through"" to the data shown. Note: This page is also available by navigating to Application Portfolio Management > Application Portfolio Analysis > Landscape Analysis
" Business Planning Portal: No. of Capabilities - Map
"Clicking the Map link here displays a map of business capabilities and sub-capabilities in a hierarchy. Capability Based Planning enables the Enterprise Architect/Business Owner to understand current capabilities, and to identify which capabilities need the most investments to close technical gaps. This allows for better alignment of yearly IT spend into appropriate initiatives and projects. It also helps identify technical gaps in capability, and technology risks in the application portfolio.
APM Portal: Capability Hierarchy Map
"Clicking the View link here displays a map of business capabilities and sub-capabilities in a hierarchy. Capability based planning enables the Enterprise Architect/Business Owner to understand current capabilities, and to identify which capabilities need the most investments to close technical gaps. This allows for better alignment of yearly IT spend into appropriate initiatives and projects. It also helps identify technical gaps in capability, and technology risks in the application portfolio. Note: This map is also available from the Business Planning Portal under No. of Capabilities > Map
" APM Portal: Technology Architecture
"Clicking the View link here opens a timeline view that displays the current status of the software models' lifecycles. Technology Portfolio Management enables the Enterprise Architect (EA) to track the versions and lifecycles of technologies. It helps: • Assess the risk to Business Capabilities and Business Applications caused by using outdated software • Identify application modernization/investment needs. • Identify applications nearing EOL
" Business Outcome: Increase Value
"Connects applications to business outcomes Modernize applications to offer new capabilities
" Key Items to Understand
"Current products Process and current application portfolio system maturity Scoped vs global applications Customer preparation checklist Customer resources and their availability Requirements
" Digital transformation (technology driving growth, blurring of industry boundaries)
"Divert IT budgets to a growth mindset, not just a ""keep the lights on"" philosophy Shift from cost reduction to investment value
Workshop strategies for the facilitator
"Engage with the customer to gain a deep understanding of their organization and their processes Give the customer the information they need to make informed decisions Guide the customer toward industry best practices Help the customer understand the difference between a configuration and a customization Have strategy ready to combat possible resistance to change within the workshop
Tips to prepare for a successful workshop
"Ensure system admins have been trained before implementation workshops begin Ensure APM process owners have attended APM Fundamentals training Custom training for APM professionals may be conducted closer to the Go Live Provide customers with checklists before the implementation workshop so that they may gather information from other stakeholders
" APM Rationalization - Evaluate
"Evaluation should be done in the context of what the portfolio should look like in the future, not where is it now. Portfolio evaluation can be simple or elaborate. Some obvious considerations are strategic value, functional fit, risk, etc. When the evaluation process is complete, you will be able to recommend actions to take for each application.
Application Portfolio Management (com.snc.apm)
"Financial Management Core (com.snc.financial_management) Fiscal Calendar (com.snc.fiscal_calendar) Project Portfolio Suite with Financials (com.snc.financial_planning_pmo) Tree map (com.snc.treemap) Data Certification (com.snc.certification_v2)
" Integration with NOW FM
"Financial Management provides information critical to estimating: Application costs and associated breakdowns Prescribed cost model for business applications Planned investments
" Business Planner Sub-Menus
"Home Goals Business Units Enterprise Strategy Business Unit Strategy Capabilities Capability Map
" Concerns: EA
"How do I manage the growth in application portfolio without introducing complexity or risk? How do we identify the right opportunities to ""upgrade"" to new, emerging technologies?
Concerns: PMO
"How do we understand the enterprise-wide demand for application enhancements and prioritize appropriately? How can we balance application enhancements with other business demand?
" Process Review Discussion
"How is your application inventory managed? What data is in the inventory? Who are the key customers of this data? What outcomes do you achieve currently? What data is not in the application inventory?
" Roles & responsibilities
"Identify which roles in your organization are responsible for the application data. It is a common practice to delegate ownership of data to different stakeholders.
" What is ServiceNow's Application Portfolio Management?
"It allows you to gain a comprehensive understanding of the business applications in your organization, so you can identify redundancies, and decrease budgetary costs By consolidating business applications within the same business function, you can identify which applications to modernize or upgrade. APM also helps you decide whether to invest, sustain, or replace these applications based on the business need aligned towards the organization goal.
" Maturity Level 1 - Applications Under Management
"Level 1 is all about having applications under management in a single system of record that can be trusted. This is where: The application lifecycle process is defined IT and Business Ownership is established Applications are categorized
" Maturity Level 2 - Basic Rationalization
"Level 2 allows for basic rationalization. Human input and manual analysis is leveraged to create simple goals. This is where: Metadata is input manually Category based optimization takes place Coarse optimization of data is achieved
" Maturity Level 3 - Advanced Rationalization
"Level 3 leverages the power of the ServiceNow platform, utilizing built-in associations and relationships to create more powerful analysis. This is where: Broadly sourced metadata is implemented Multi-objective rationalization becomes possible Business and IT demands are integrated
" Maturity Level 4 - Continuously Optimized Portfolio
"Level 4 is where users reach continuous improvement mode. This is where: Artificial Intelligence based recommendations play a role Tightly integrated Demand processes are implemented Regularly evolving criteria and use cases are utilized
" APM Triggers
"New application introduced into portfolio Major changes to business applications (e.g., rollout, capability) Changes to application performance (e.g., incidents, changes) Periodic updates to application assessments
Common areas of interest to all stakeholders include:
"Number of applications and application ownership Applications by business capability, data classification, business criticality, PII data, etc. Accuracy of application information
" APM Rationalization - Measure
"Once your assets are identified, measuring the cost, quality, risk, user satisfaction, etc. of those applications is essential. Use base functionality indicators that source data from ITSM, PPM, and Financial Management to assess applications across many dimensions
" Activating Add-On Plugins Available on Subscription
"Performance Analytics - Content Pack - Application Portfolio Management ( com.snc.pa.apm) - Allows you to view the analyses of application portfolios in a landscape page, the application indicator scores in a dashboard, and the Application 360. Performance Analytics - Content Pack - Application Portfolio Management and Change Management (com.snc.pa.apm.change_request) - Allows you to access performance analytics metrics of business applications associated with Change requests. Performance Analytics - Content Pack - Application Portfolio Management and Problem Management (com.snc.pa.apm.problem) - Allows you to access performance analytics metrics of business applications associated with Problem Management.
" Business Outcome: Reduce Risk
"Prioritize updates to riskier and unstable applications Mitigate risks due to outdated technology
" Business Outcome: Reduce Cost
"Rationalize application portfolio to reduce duplication Lower support costs due to complexity
" The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).
"TOGAF is a framework for enterprise architecture that provides an approach for designing, planning, implementing, and governing an enterprise information technology architecture.
Success Blockers
"Technical debt Duplication Security & Compliance risks Increasing support costs Slow change
" 3 Main Navigation Starting Points
"The Application Portfolio Management Portal The Application Portfolio Management Dashboards The Business Planning Portal
" Business Planning Portal
"The Business Planning Portal was created to provide a home for business planning activities. The portal acts as a starting point to understand IT from a business point of view. You will use this portal to capture enterprise strategies, business unit strategies, goals and capabilities.
" Application 360 Dashboard
"The application 360 dashboard uses Performance Analytics to identify which business applications require focus and attention. The dashboard uses indicator scores to help you evaluate applications and make effective decisions. Some of the various tabs and sections Application 360 provides are: Overview: review the overall application score for the fiscal period Costs: view cost details and ratings over time, comparing them over different quarters Workload: view graphical illustrations of the number of incidents, problems and changes associated with this particular application
" Application Assessments Dashboard
"The application assessments dashboard provides reports on the performance of your business applications. The spline charts let you see at a glance how your applications are trending over time. Some of the included reports track the trends for: Level of customer satisfaction Application usage Business value of the applications Technical risk the applications may have
" Application Landscape Dashboard
"The application landscape dashboard provides an overview of all the applications used in your business enterprise. The dashboard provides pre-configured reports on applications, grouped by categories: Top 10 applications actively used, grouped by application category and application family Applications grouped based on install type, platform, application category, manufacturer, technology stack, etc. Details of number of applications by category versus the manufacturer details Number of applications by application category versus the age of the applications
" Installing the APM Plugin
"The four we will be installing include: a. The main APM plugin b. The APM Performance Analytics Content Pack c. The Change Management PA Content Pack, and... d. The Problem Management PA Content Pack
" APM Rationalization - Identify
"The process of rationalizing your portfolio begins with capturing an inventory of all applications and the underlying technology platform in use. Use the CMDB and automated tools to identify servers and software applications installed on your network.
" Concerns: CIO
"What business capabilities do we support well and where are the gaps? How do we balance investments between legacy apps and digital technologies?
Key Questions
"What problem are we trying to solve? What is the business driver behind this requirement? Are there any walk-through scenarios, use cases, or examples? What are the outputs?
Problem: There is no single repository of applications. Applications are tracked in multiple spreadsheets
A single centralized system stores the applications inventory and all related data
" Integration with NOW PPM
APM integrates with PPM to track execution of strategic goals and recommendations, and to assess planned investments for applications.
Integration with NOW Policy Compliance
APM leverages policy compliance to keep track of policies, standards, and internal control procedures that are cross-mapped to external regulations.
Problem: There is no single definition of an application. For example - is SAP an Application?
APM provides an unambiguous definition of a business application
" Integration with NOW RISK
APM uses Risks to identify applications with immediate or ongoing issues that can then be mitigated, prevented, or remedied.
" How does APM Leverage the ServiceNow System?
Application Portfolio Management uses the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), discovery processes, and cost modeling to deliver a complete picture of your application portfolio. It also leverages other key elements of the ServiceNow platform.
Problem: The business value provided by an application is too subjective
Arrive at the business value created by an application using data points (objective assessment)
Engage and invite
As the internal project team, the first step is assembling the right people to engage. These personas may include: IT leadership, Enterprise Architects, IT Operations, and Application Owners. It may also be good practice to include some periphery parties including: Audit, Compliance, and Regulators.
Advanced Functionality
Build the foundation, build organizational alignment, build knowledge. Delivery of core functionality as quickly as possible, in order to realize near-term return on investment.
6 Sections of the APM Portal
Business Architecture, Application Architecture, Technology Architecture, Opportunities and Solutions, Notifications, and Recent Activity
" TOGAF is typically modeled at four levels:
Business, Application, Data, and Technology. The current implementation of ServiceNow's APM aligns to three of the four levels: Business, Application, and Technology, with plans to add Data Architecture in a future version of APM
Changing customer needs (IT customization with low effort is essential)
Changing customer needs (IT customization with low effort is essential)
" Volatile business demand (increased competition, speed is essential)
Control tech portfolio growth and streamline ops and delivery
" Authoritative List
Create an authoritative list of applications, and related entities, with agreed-upon attributes. Application inventory is useful for different stakeholders such as EA, Application Owners, and Security teams. Related entities include application instances, business capabilities, technologies, etc.
" Functionality
Delivery depends on our client's requirements, industry, complexity, and maturity.
" Enterprise Architects
Enterprise Architects (EAs) take a company's business strategy and define an IT systems architecture to support that strategy. EAs must understand a company's business and be able to dive deeply into technology issues. They ensure a company's technology objectives are aligned to its business goals.
Training and application knowledge
For a successful workshop, customers who are new to the ServiceNow platform should take preliminary ServiceNow training to understand the basics of the platform - navigation, processes, basic functionality of forms and reports.
" Concerns: BU Leader
How can I make sure my applications provide the capabilities I need, when I need them?
Problem: There is pressure to cut down the IT Applications budgets
In APM you can create programs to track your application rationalization efforts
Integration with NOW Service Management
Service Management allows you to manage business functions that require a request-type workflow where request are approved, qualified, assigned, and completed. APM leverages this to assess the incidents, problems and changes for applications.
" Request Plugin Activation through the HI Service Portal
The Bubble Chart widget for Service Portal (com.snc.sp_workbench_widgets) plugin and the Business Planner (com.snc.apm.business_planner) plugin must be activated by ServiceNow personnel, so they will not appear in the System Definition > Plugins list in your instance. You'll need to make two separate requests in HI to have them activated.
Application Portfolio Management Portal
The APM portal gives you an enterprise-wide applications landscape view of your applications and other key metrics. You can view and access all the APM modules from this portal.
" Role of Business Planner
The role of a business planner involves only planning and managing the entities to achieve the business goal and does not deal with the business applications or technologies that support the business.
APM Portal: Opportunities & Solutions
This section allows you to view and/or directly create a Program, Goal, or Demand by clicking the appropriate link.
" APM Portal: Recent Activity
This section allows you to view your most recent activities - creating a program, goal, or a demand for a fiscal period.
Integration with NOW Vendors and Contracts
Vendors and Contracts management in ServiceNow is crucial to APM for tracking changes to a contract and keeping an audit trail.
" Typical use cases that application portfolio management supports
the key one there is creating that authoritative list of applications, their related entities, and agreed upon attributes. Within the middle section we also can assess the application health and the value of those applications that they bring to the organization. We can analyze the technology dependencies and risks that were involved with those dependencies. We can assess the business capabilities and align applications to those business capabilities. Using the CMDB we can map infrastructure to applications, but also align ITSM activities to those applications as well.
