foreign [Music] hello and welcome to the cast Distillery podcast where we unlock the full potential of servicenow with expert insights and practical strategies only here on the cast Distillery podcast I'm your host Sean Dawson client architect at Cask as well and with me I have Megan harder who is the director of Enterprise program transformation she has over 20 years of tech project management to strategic program transformation is an ITIL expert and been doing this for for over 20 years so thank you so much Megan for taking time out of your schedule and joining us here on the podcast today thanks for having me Sean this is great so what I thought would be a good place to start with this is you know what what is a road map I I grabbed a list and there's so many different road maps there's technology life cycle road map says project road maps there's capability roadmaps scenario road maps what kind of road map are we talking about here So today we're going to focus on something called a strategic roadmap or an outcomes-based approach roadmap where really we're taking a look at aligning to what maybe is going on in your organization that are gaps or you know strategic goals that you might have to align to either a corporate strategy or departmental goals a CIO strategy HR strategy anything like that and really focusing on the end State first um we almost work backwards in terms of what you're looking to solve or where you're looking to get for a destination and then figure out what points you need to get to to Really achieve those Targets in a meaningful way and then put together a strategy around kind of that value realization in terms of how will you know when you've got there what does that actually look like for your organization and when can you expect to see some of those results overlying technology on top of that is kind of a secondary piece but really focusing on where your organization wants to be and um you know kind of that thoughtful approach of how you want to get there to solve those problems okay perfect so essentially if you really break it down what you're focusing on is the business need and then mapping that to Tech but turning that into a road map that goes over uh quarters years whatever it is it doesn't matter it goes over a timeline really am I getting that right yeah that's exactly right perfect perfect um well mine why is it important to have a strategic roadmap so if you're thinking about technology only and you're only looking at you know what might be in front of you from a licensing perspective or specific components of any particular technology you may miss pieces of that particular application or even other applications that might be a holistic and better fit for your organization to get where you really want to go um you know I've heard a couple customers say that they've had implementation in spite of strategy right or in the place of spread strategy where they may have done many different pieces of work but they didn't really get anywhere with it um you know they just kind of checked a box and said well we bought this we should implement it but they didn't really think about kind of why they were implementing it or how they could optimize their business or maybe streamline processes or reduce processing time or reduce swivel chairs or any number of things that we see customers yeah really striving to achieve from a business perspective and understanding why it matters to their organization um you know what the business case is for actually wanting to do those specific things in a holistic kind of overview type approach rather than just oh well today we're going to do you know Incident Management and next year we're going to do HR like how do all those pieces fit together and why should you care about that and hopefully you know you're getting organizational buy-in around the importance of these different projects so that everyone understands why not only why they're important but how it could impact their work and their kind of their day-to-day lives in a positive capacity rather than just being like oh this is another thing that we have to do right and sometimes that bogs people down from their day jobs right this this really is their day job um ex making their business excellent and how can we help them get there that's really kind of the Crux of it yeah and you you kind of called out something in there that made me think I've always used this term painting myself into a corner or I don't want you to paint yourself into a corner you talked about Implement implementation without strategy and it really to me I've seen so many organizations start going down a path and it's almost too late and they figure out gosh we've locked ourselves in now they're looking at refactoring or re-implementing or didn't connect something so now they go to go to different routes that's a a very good point so for organizations that aren't familiar with it how how can they start the Strategic Road mapping process and maybe who needs to be involved with that sure so you know the most successful strategic roadmaps um we've had some sort of high level executive stakeholder sponsorship or at least interest in the final product um at times we've worked with different customers who then take these things to their senior leadership as a business case to proceed but it's always really good if you have an Engaged senior stakeholder it doesn't necessarily have to be a c-level uh you know executive but someone who has some Sway and I guess organizational backing right in terms of what their opinion matters within your organization um if you can get backing by someone like that in your in your organization to work through something like this it it holds a little bit more you get a little bit more traction um it does take time and commitment in terms of you know being willing to dive into the different areas that might be a problem or where your organization is struggling and um kind of be able to suss that out it takes honesty right you have to be able to look at yourselves with an objective lens and be like yeah you know we're really not great at that or you know I'm hearing the same theme across the organization and being okay with the fact that your organization probably has some gaps and um you know places where they could mature and that's not necessarily a weakness or it means your organization is failing it just means that these are the opportunities in which you can latch on to and be able to make some growth as you're working towards this but you know kind of the the critical factors here are you know time and um you know resource commitment and capability to be able to execute on something like this as well as the organizational skill to kind of pull something like this together and be able to see and read into themes and understand kind of where you should go yeah that's great thanks for that um and then I you know we I alluded it to it earlier when we talk about there's different kinds of road maps but uh from what I'm seeing is that you know you can get you know a technical road map in a strategic road map and how do they how do they different and do they come together yeah they absolutely can come together a technical roadmap really highlights the pieces of technology that will support a more strategic type road map um the best road maps that I've worked on we don't even talk technology Until the End right we understand what problems we want to solve what outcomes we want to achieve and how will we know we got there and then we take a look at the application portfolio that a customer might have um you know and quite often working with Cask we are looking at the servicenow platform and you know how can that solve and um be kind of that underpinning technology that marries into the Strategic roadmap but you know we don't go into it with our mindset that okay we need itsm and itom and itam and you know maybe a little SPM later we really take a look at the components of the platform yeah and how we can execute upon that um after that strategic roadmap is done but the technology piece is equally important because if you don't don't have the technology you don't have the conduit for Success right you have to have something that marries it all together from a technological perspective and there may be outside applications you know that need to interface in some capacity to really achieve your optimal goals and having that all painted out in one picture can really help you write your business case and understand kind of what the organization is going to get out of this um and often take that for buy-in or budget or something like that to be able to to execute against it good good um so now that we're talking about you know uh strategic technical road map I imagine and and I've personally seen this as well I I don't need to imagine that I've seen it where road maps can get pretty big I mean especially when you start overlapping the technical side of it from your experience how would you recommend avoiding like road map overwhelm you know and how to get balance and what you need out of that what are your thoughts on that I think you have to really understand where your organization is today and the amount of resources whether it be Financial or people resources that you are able to kind of redirect towards a transformational effort um lots of people you know that saying where your eyes are bigger than your stomach right and you end up taking way more dinner than you think you can eat because it looks really good we see that a lot right like people dive in yeah I want to do it all right now this is going to be great we're going to get it in by the end of the year and then all of a sudden they see what that takes and they're like oh right that's a lot of working sessions that my three stakeholders are going to have to sit in at the same time you know so really working that's one of the advantages of working with a partner such as task is that we can help you take a look at your organization and the different pieces of work that need to go into achieving those outcomes and then put together an execution strategy that matches your organization you know there are some organizations that are primed and ready to run and can take on a multi-work stream of Engagement and be able to allocate full-time resources to it but there are many many many more who can't do that right and where are they going to see kind of the biggest bang and how can we make sure that every single component really reflects what they need it to at that time and that those resources are focused on the right things um sometimes it seems boring you know some of that foundational work can feel my gosh why do we have to do this now but when you get later and you realize that you set that really solid foundation and people understand you know roles and responsibilities and process and the technology components on top of that that when you get more mature into those processes you don't have to revisit that constantly and it's just kind of a new way of working um those are some of the things that you know we can really help with in terms of that execution plan and your roadmap could be six months long it could be five years long or Beyond um constantly reevaluating that as well and making sure that you're getting the traction you hoped to and if the answer is that we're not or you know people are constantly being pulled away again kind of like the honesty thing being able to take an objective look at yourself and understand where your deficiencies are and can you close them with a partner or can you close them internally by reflecting on reality and being able to work with where you are and having a partner who's willing to meet you where you are and create a plan that can get you exactly where you need to go yep um and then when we when I as you were talking I was thinking about you know overwhelm and I could see that happening not only from the the Strategic and Technical but when we start adding work streams because you know the servicenow is a huge platform we we talked with before on the podcast about getting the most value out of the platform so you want to start those value conversations with other groups um but from uh strategic roadmap standpoint um how would you recommend managing across multiple work streams on that like I I know there's a little bit of I keep hearing a theme of a little bit of ocm in there there's organizational change management you gotta I always call it who what where and why so everybody knows what's going on but what are your thoughts on managing the Strategic level across multiple work streams in a strategic road map any thoughts on that yeah so successful in this and this are having the roadmap components not necessarily map to any one particular piece of the platform and then helping those maybe functional areas learn how their components fit the big picture um from a customer perspective and then kind of the the idea of a I'm going to call it a strategic architect for lack of a better term at the moment um someone who really sits alongside with someone like myself and provides the layer of technical oversight and governance across the program um in a technical lead capacity right where they understand the big picture they're not solutioning individual components of that but they make sure that everyone who is understands kind of how all those different pieces fit together and where those dependencies lie on oh we're doing something an asset that's going to impact some of the work that we're doing in item right like let's make sure that we are sequencing those things properly and that those Architects or business process Consultants are having conversations regularly so that they're planning out how their work goes and and understanding kind of that big picture as much as possible um I think you can't do a multi-work stream program you know strategic or not without the different components understanding how their bodies of work impact one another and kind of having these functions on the top to ensure that those conversations are happening so often we're only focused on you know the little box that I'm working on um as a specialist across the platform right like I'm just gonna do my piece of work and that's going to be good but when you get into these multi-work stream programs you're really looking at a machine and things you know they have to work together and there are components that are you know directly impacting one another and making sure that someone is helping to string those conversations along and paint that picture so that it's not a surprise and everybody knows what's coming and the customer also understands kind of how those pieces fit together so that as they operationalize these different components they really know how their organization is architect because moving on into operations they'll have the same types of interactions between their platform components same as we do it during an implementation phase foreign [Music]