Using ServiceNow for Good?

Agility While Maintaining Control

Coming from a software engineering background and striving to optimise flow and the rate of delivery of user needs through to production, I've always found the operational world of service management immensely frustrating.

When adopting a DevOps approach to application delivery, automating the application build, test, approve and deployment process is key to delivering a responsive value-focused delivery process. It has typically been my experience that the service management process to "approve" a release slows down the release process and reduces the business’ ability to be dynamic in responding to user needs. This results in the service management team being known as the team that says "No", creating a cultural divide between the development team trying to respond the users and the operations team trying to keep control of the IT estate.

Now, add in a shift towards the use of dynamic cloud infrastructure and architecting services to scale dynamically to demand. The traditional approach adopted by service management tools to discover infrastructure, catalogue applications and control the change process is becoming outdated. A dynamically created piece of infrastructure may exist in one instant, be discovered by the service management toolset and then destroyed by the application an instant later, leaving the picture of the application infrastructure that the service management tool captured immediately out of date.

At this point, I hear the service management community screaming in my ears:

“Our business us a heavily regulated industry with many legacy applications at the heart of business.?Auditability for the regulators is critically important to being allowed to operate. We need to know exactly what is out there and if it is going to change, then we need to know that changes are governed and won't cause a major outage or introduce some rogue code that could threaten the security of our business and the users’ confidence in the service we provide.”

Ok, I get it!

Getting the balance right

So, there is a balance to get right, the balance between agility and control. How does a business maintain auditability, compliance and govern change while responding to user needs at the rate we have become used to in our everyday use of technology, where updates happen dynamically in the background many times a day?

There are two key perspectives to consider when trying to tackle this challenge.

The first is understanding the current IT estate, understanding the constraints this places on the business and creating a roadmap to evolve the IT and provide the required infrastructure and applications that will support the business in being competitive in its market.?

The second is knowing how to use current tools and products available in the market to deliver the delivery and operational changes the business needs.

1: Current State Assessment

There are number of dimensions to consider when looking at the current state and thinking about evolving to a better future state, this includes; infrastructure, applications and application architecture, current supplier contracts and current operating model. This data and analysis can help inform decision making when looking to optimise the application delivery operating model.

However, the key assessment activity is to baseline the end-to-end process, identify what is currently being done, why and capture data about which tasks are manual and automated in the process.?Inspecting this data can identify where to focus efforts, to ensure investment in automation and optimisation of process is concentrated in the right places.

Only with this baseline in place is it possible to monitor and track the improvements being made and foster a continual improvement mindset. For each improvement that can be made, be sure to establish the value it will deliver to the business and prioritise improvements appropriately, there may be some complex changes that just don't provide enough of a benefit along the way.

2: Selecting the Tools to Deliver

There are many tools in the market that are trying to bridge the gap between automated infrastructure and application delivery and controlled operational management. And at the heart of all these is release process orchestration.

The release process orchestration tooling landscape is populated with tools originating in three broadly different camps:

The development toolsets, e.g. Microsoft's Azure DevOps and GitHub Flow.

Specialist middle-ground release orchestration toolsets, e.g. Digital.ai Release or CloudBees Flow.

The service management platforms, e.g. ServiceNow's Flow Designer and DevOps capability.

The best tool selection for your organisation will often depend on where the drive for automation is coming from, what internal skills the organisation has and what tools are currently being used.?That’s why the assessment should identify the toolsets being used across the business for development, code management, build and deployment automation and service management.

Many organisations already have a wide variety of development toolsets that have evolved over time and each team will have its own unique needs for delivery. As a result, trying to standardise toolsets for development is always going to be difficult and very rarely welcomed by delivery teams. So, trying to align the release orchestration tools with your development toolset is almost certainly not desirable even if each toolset has the capability to carry out the required integration.

Middle-ground release orchestration tools have the advantage that they are independent of both the development and service management toolset, so can be seen as a neutral option to gain buy-in from both sides of the automation debate. While this route can look attractive, it does introduce a new toolset into the organisation, with niche skill requirements. Furthermore, it has the potential to create a cottage industry outside of the development and service management communities and may struggle to gain long-term acceptance – even if the tooling is robust and independent.

The third option is to consider new product features being delivered within Service Management platforms like ServiceNow. Process flow is “bread and butter” for Service Management tools and a fundamental requirement for release process orchestration, so if you have strong Service Management development skills, this is definitely an option worth exploring. ServiceNow has new features that make the development of responsive integrations much easier using their Flow Designer and Integration Hub tools.

The opportunity now exists to integrate your compliance and audit process into a product team’s automate build, test and deployment processes.?We’ve achieved impressive orchestration benefits with several recent clients by implementing a combination of code and expert consulting services to enable the service management operation to join up seamlessly with DevOps workflow, achieving a near zero-touch operation that is still fully auditable and compliant. As a service management ‘sceptic’, I’ve been impressed by the speed at which the checks and balances can be achieved and the flexibility this approach can offer to development teams.?

Making it a Reality?

Understanding the problem and selecting the right tool for your organisation will still not guarantee you success. To deliver robust release automation that links the development process with the organisation’s audit and control processes will require a business sponsor and a strong business case to secure the investment required make the changes across your organisation a reality.

Through a small up-front investment, you can use the evidence gathered from a current state assessment, and demonstrate technical viability through a proof of value implementation with a selected pilot team eager to improve their business responsiveness.?

You will then have what you need to underpin your business case and you will be able to demonstrate what good looks like to the wider business. You will have evidence of the benefits the pilot team has gained, be it a faster rate of delivery or reduced delay through the change management and release audit process.

So, fellow members of the DevOps community, please trust me when I say that it is indeed possible to use ServiceNow (or equivalent) for good; with a thoughtful approach, strong leadership and a focus on value, control can really be established without sacrificing agility. My previous frustrations with many aspects of traditional operational service management no longer really apply.

Our Experience

At Mozaic we have worked with many organisations to assess and transform their approach to service management. Our experience, combined with the deep tooling expertise offered by our Agile/DevOps practice, means we are very well positioned to help tech leaders tackle points of friction within their workflow and enable their workforce to meet demands of the business in a timely and efficient manner.

Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss automation opportunities in your organisation or feel free to comment below if you have further thoughts to share on this topic.

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