hey everyone welcome back to my channel so good to have you here in this video we are going to talk about how to get into servicenow from a project management background now there's two really good paths available to you the first path and the path of least resistance and the one you can exploit now is to continue being an excellent PM just do it for servicenow projects some of the biggest and most successful servicenow projects that I have been on have been led by project managers who knew nothing about servicenow if you want to listen to one of those experiences I'm going to have a link in the description below to an episode of CJ and the Duke where we interviewed one of these PMS so why is it that a PM can be so successful in a servicenow deployment without knowing servicenow well it's easy because the PM obsesses about the outcomes constrained by cost schedule scope and resources those are the levers and the variables that the project manager tries to manage all while also handling risks issues decisions actions and changes they are managing the efforts of dozens to hundreds of people all on a single overarching objective which nobody except for the PM is responsible for in its entire it is a critical skill set it is a powerful valuable Niche and if you're excellent at this already why on Earth would you want to dilute that excellence in order to establish a merely adequate skill set in servicenow now some would argue that a PM with good knowledge of servicenow would be making better estimates on servicenow projects and therefore the project would run better but really isn't it more likely that the project manager is going to be spending most of their time managing the project and therefore don't have time to be the big servicenow expert they will ask the excellent servicenow expert their thoughts on the scope and size of the project and carry those estimates on into the project plan okay so what if you are applying to be a servicenow PM and the organization asks you for a minimum number of years experience in servicenow what I would do is challenge that question immediately I would say something like in those three years of experience on servicenow what skill do you believe would make me better at managing the cost scope schedule and resources of a servicenow deployment the second path you might consider is one of doing consulting on servicenow's SPM SPM stands for strategic portfolio management this is where you would come into other pmos and you would help them transition or build on to the servicenow SPM module this module contains ideation demand management project management both in the agile and the waterfall sense it also does cost planning Resource Management planning the portfolios managing the programs it's got Road mapping it's got application portfolio management it's this Suite of tools that we use to decide as an organization how do we best spend our money and then how do we make sure those initiatives are successful when we decide to deploy them and then how do we mitigate the real life stuff that comes in and gets in our way the reason why your previous PM experience is going to be critical to this is that the industry is dying for people who understand the language of the pmo for too many years pmos have relied on partners that have itsm specialized resources but they don't speak the language of the pmo they don't know what keeps the pmo up at night worried they don't know the big huge juicy exciting outcomes that the pmo wants to achieve so for my money former PMS would be excellent resources for deploying the SPM module on servicenow there's two roadblocks in your way number one you have to understand the fundamentals of the servicenow platform in a build capacity you have to to understand all about business rules all about flow designer all about UI policies and client scripts and UI actions all those build components you have to know them so you have to have the same level of expertise as a servicenow admin would the second skill you need is to understand how it all works as any one of the various stakeholders and this is a much harder task than in other parts of service now because there are so many different roles and so many different processes contained in servicenow it's a completely different experience to be a demand manager than it is to be a project manager than it is to be a portfolio manager that is to be a stakeholder that's just involved in these projects and demands and it takes a decent amount of tool finesse to understand how the system is actually working when you're managing the data through the process and if you don't believe me consider this when actually actualizing your actual actions which actuals are actually the most actual actuals actually yeah that's actually a thing so to get past two first of all get your CSA get that fundamental platform Knowledge from a build perspective and the second thing you do is get your PDI and start inputting your demo data start working through the processes as if you were each of these stakeholders and if you need any help with that my door is always open my name is Robert the Duke fedoric I am a servicenow architect consiglieri career coach and recruiter if I can help you find better servicenow outcomes reach me via Rob the duke.digital thanks for watching foreign