welcome to build a servicenow platform team part of our best practices series in this video you'll learn about the most common challenges customers face when building out their platform team and our recommendations for overcoming them you'll leave this video armed with a list of resources and actions to help you build and develop a strong team to support the now platform your platform team establishes maintains and extends servicenow as a strategic business platform in your organization for this reason one of your top priorities is building a strong team made up of the right types and numbers of resources and once you have your team in place you'll need a clear mission objectives and guiding principles to keep your team grounded aligned to priorities and motivated to do their best work which also requires that they have the right skills and business acumen and a path for growth none of these things are easy for new and maturing teams so let's break each of these down your first order of business is securing the right types and numbers of resources starting with the roles you need this is generally based on your instant setup the way you use the platform and your internal operating model you'll need a core team that is responsible for the day-to-day management and maintenance of the platform administrators a platform architect and business analyst to name a few you also need an extended team individuals from the business or other functions that will support you in making servicenow a strategic platform such as process owners subject matter experts and release managers next you need to determine how many of each type of resource you need and where you'll acquire them we'll discuss a tool to help you with this shortly but it's important to note that individuals can fulfill multiple roles and some of your resources might be shared across functions for example it is not uncommon for a platform architect to also be an integration expert or for a platform owner to be a demand manager roles like project managers might be shared from a central pmo and you might have a separate team for organizational change management activities if you find yourself needing additional resources consider augmenting your staff with certified partner resources we have guidance on the customer success center to help you get started now let's talk about that team sizing tool our platform team estimator will help you determine a starting point for your resourcing needs you'll answer some questions about your instance demographics like how many production instances you have the way you use the platform like which product families you're licensed for and a few questions about your operating model like whether you outsource work together these responses will be used to generate a personalized report with recommended roles and a range of full-time equivalents for each you can use this as a framework to start a resourcing conversation internally or with servicenow with your resources in place you'll need to grow and develop your team to set them up for success the value of servicenow is only as good as the team supporting the platform your team will need a strong sense of purpose and a clear set of priorities to align their work to make sure to create a team charter to include your mission objectives values and any other critical team information your team should be bought into it and team members should help evolve it over time your team also needs to have the right skills to succeed which means you need to provide ongoing learning opportunities this includes servicenow skills technical and management which can be achieved through taking now learning courses or exploring the customer success center for example and business knowledge which requires embedding team members in everyday business conversations your team should understand high-level business challenges and use that information to help solve for them with the now platform but learning is not one and done encourage an ongoing learning mindset so that your team can grow alongside the platform one easy way to start is by pursuing some of servicenow's learning paths or certifications building a team and growing and evolving it over time is not easy but we have resources to help you get you started the platform team estimator provides guidance on the types and numbers of roles you need to support your platform our team charter template is great for organizing your mission objectives and other information without having to reinvent the wheel and now learning and other training resources will help your team members keep their skills sharp and adopt a continuous learning mindset you can find all of these resources on the customer success center there are three insights we want you to remember from this video first your platform team is made up of more than just technical roles that administer the platform you also need individuals that work closely with the business second you should have a clear mission and objectives to keep you grounded in your priorities third to be successful with servicenow long term you need a strong team with a continuous improvement mindset start by encouraging your team members to pursue our predefined learning paths so what should you do next first take time to review the resources we have on the customer success center these materials will provide you with the starting point for determining resource needs and guiding you with team development next schedule time with your sponsor to talk about your team goals and needs it may take some time to find the right resources so it's best to start the conversation early lastly create a plan for growing and developing your team keep your team engaged and enable them to mature alongside or ahead of the platform for it's their servicenow skills and business acumen that will deliver new features and functionality that drive value for more information or advice contact your servicenow team thank you for watching