* – A play on the famous James Carville quote about the economy, not implying that ServiceNow folks are stupid
It’s been a few years since I wrote Part 1 of this article, going through the history and evolution of the ServiceNow platform, and the morphing of the company strategy from platform to product. After working with multiple clients in the meantime, and reading lots of new marketing and going through many platform release upgrades, I thought it time to revisit the subject with new perspective and analysis.
A quick recap: In the early 2000s, ServiceNow (nee “Glide”) was envisioned and built as an extensible business workflow platform, designed to replace paper and manual processes, but without a defined business application built-in. The idea was that businesses would analyze their own processes and automate using the platform components. Once this didn’t catch on, the SN founders built an application suite on top of the platform using what they knew – ITSM. This caught on, and in the subsequent years both customers and ServiceNow have used the extensibility of the platform to build and solve countless business processes problems. As ServiceNow itself has gone public and had multiple leadership changes, the company has shifted development, sales and marketing focus to products it builds on top of its own platform. This is why most discussions around new releases are around Products, and not platform enhancements.
While this all may be natural progression for a company that goes public and has to answer to the markets and short-term financial interests, it poses some issues for those attempting to use ServiceNow as a platform rather than a series of products.
Buy versus Build
In the early days of ServiceNow, the process for implementing a business process solution was generally straightforward (other than specific ITSM processes, which were built in). As a consultant, you would listen to the business problem that needed solving, then design and implement a custom* solution using the platform components provided (see Part 1 for more detail). There wasn’t a longer discussion or decision required for build versus buy, since the platform was designed to be built upon. ServiceNow provided the components to build the tools (applications) to solve business problems, and the licensing was based on fulfiller versus requester. There was no further buy versus build decision to be made.
*NOTE: Although this could spawn an entirely separate discussion, I want to point out that in the ServiceNow world, “custom” is not a bad word, though it is often seen as such. In reality, building a new application using the platform components ServiceNow provides is doing exactly as the founders intended. It is also not really “custom” in the true sense of the word. It is simply a new way of using the components provided.
Simplification by Obfuscation?
The nature of strategizing control over flexibility means you take the power of the platform out of the hands of those who are best equipped to take advantage of it. This has been true long before ServiceNow and will continue to be true long after, but I believe it is exacerbated in the ServiceNow space by the factors previously mentioned: market forces, management changes, market strategies, misinformation and misconstrued information. Over the years as ServiceNow has moved from a ticketing system to a strategic platform for companies, I’ve watched as C-level executives have injected common phrases like “stay out of the box” and “minimize upgrade efforts” into the lexicon. I can only assume these come from history with other platforms and reading industry studies, rather than from deep knowledge of what this really means for their ServiceNow implementation. I also assume because those who are making the financial decisions are saying these things, that they become both gospel and strategy for those who have a vested interest in their decision-making.
I liken what ServiceNow has done to the platform to using WordPress for website development, rather than DreamWeaver. The latter is a framework that gives you pre-built components that experienced developers can use to build custom websites faster. The former is more for non-developers to implement fully pre-built websites with a small to moderate ability to make configuration changes. But for an experienced website developer in certain circumstances working with WordPress can be more challenging because things that could easily be modified in CSS aren’t always accessible. In this way, WordPress makes it easy to deploy a website that fits their model, but makes it far more difficult to make what are often necessary changes after the fact.
Business Example:
Here’s an example of what I’ve been describing:
Business Requirement: A need to manage company events such as luncheons, meetings and guest visits. The company wants to use their ServiceNow investment and the platform tasking and workflows to do so.
Platform Solution: A ServiceNow architect uses the Task application model to extend to a new Task Type called “Event”, creates a Record Producer to intake customer needs (available in the Service Catalog), builds sub-tasking records and initiates them with a workflow based on state changes to the parent Event. Form and list views, notifications and reports are configured to meet business needs. Security for the new application is layered on as needed. Any specific business requirement can be implemented without concern for “breaking” out of box solutions, and is completely upgrade-proof (ServiceNow doesn’t care about net new applications and components – they are completely ignored in upgrades).
“Out of the Box” Solution: The customer ServiceNow team is told to stay “out of the box” and so attempts to build the solution in Service Request with a Catalog Item for intake. The Event data takes the form of many variables on the Requested Item. The workflow is driven off of variables, and Catalog Tasks are initiated by the workflow. The ServiceNow team has to customize the Request and Task forms for Event needs, creating maintenance issues – the application looks and functions one way for “normal” Service Requests, and a different way for Event Requests. Forms, lists, reports, notifications, security are all doubled with mutually exclusive conditions. Subsequent implementations like this use case in Service Request further complicate the configurations and maintenance.
Product Solution: A ServiceNow Account Manager hears “buzzwords” from the customer regarding their business needs and finds an out of the box product to license them. The customer installs the new product and demos for the business. Stakeholders find that the product only partially aligns with their needs. The business has to make a decision to either customize the ServiceNow product for their needs, or go through a rigorous and costly OCM cycle to change the way their business works to fit the ServiceNow product. If choosing the former, the company loses the ongoing maintenance benefits of staying “out of the box”, while still paying new licensing charges. Anyone who has worked in corporations knows the latter requires an incredible sales job to accomplish – businesses DO NOT like to change!
If you’re intuiting the conclusion I’m reaching with this example, you realize the irony is that what most would call the “custom” solution is actually the solution with the least development friction, the least technical debt, and the least upgrade concerns.
Conclusion
We’ve reached a concerning level of misinformation and mischaracterization of design and development decisions as ServiceNow has changed both their platform focus and marketing strategy. But what ServiceNow cannot change is the fundamental nature of the platform any product they build and market is based upon. Those architects and developers who truly understand this fundamental nature are much better equipped to deliver real value to their customers via shorter development cycles, maintainability, and upgradeability. Remember: “custom” is not a bad word!
