welcome to managing now platform demand part of our best practices series in this video you'll learn about what platform demand management is why it's important and the proven ServiceNow recommended approach to managing demand you'll leave this video armed with the resources you need to assess how well your demand management process aligns with best practices and to determine if you should make any changes to your process demand management is a foundational capability needed to support increased adoption of ServiceNow it is a process to facilitate consistent decision making for all ServiceNow requests be it for new products or enhancements getting this right allows your organization to work on what matters most at the right time the payoff of a well-designed demand management process is significant you'll be able to make informed investments in ServiceNow but thereby improving the quality of services and capabilities you offer through the now platform you can achieve this with greater visibility into where and how ServiceNow fits into your organization's goals increased collaboration between teams and a streamlined process to evaluate investments so what do you need to implement a streamlined demand management process ServiceNow recommends a four-step approach start by creating an intake model that answers the why what who and when questions about the investments use the data from the intake model to prioritize and approve demands once these two steps are working you can take the demand process to the next level by creating a continuous feedback loop from expected business outcomes to the ServiceNow roadmap and lastly apply agile practices to increase not just your delivery velocity but the speed of your decision making process let's take a deeper look into each of these starting with step 1 an intake model should provide enough information to the right stakeholders to make an investment decision there are four critical pieces to the intake model start with a simple intake form that has all the information needed to evaluate and triage demands a user story format is a good way to help requesters clearly articulate what they need and why to find key stakeholder roles like requesters demand owners business and technical stakeholders and a demand board which will provide governance and strategic direction ensuring demands aligned to business objectives lastly make sure to define a single source of truth for all demand management activity with a demand intake model in place you have the foundation necessary to begin thinking about how you will enhance approve and prioritize demands assess the value effort and risk associated with the demand effort can be FTE hours estimated cost sprint points or whatever makes sense for your organization value and risk should consider things like regulatory compliance needs support for business priorities user experience and scope of impact with these definitions in hand you will be able to prioritize and approve deny or defer each demand based on their effort value and risk profile you don't need to follow the same process for all demands for example smaller demands can be approved by service owners whereas larger strategic demands go to the demand board once you have a demand process established the next step is to mature your process from demand intake to continuous demand shaping in other words moving from a weight and assess approach to proactively anticipating and shaping demand for ServiceNow capabilities to effectively shape demands the platform team and the demand board need to understand enterprise priorities and expected outcomes and continuously monitor that the ServiceNow roadmap aligns with these priorities in turn business partners are aware of the ServiceNow roadmap so they can inform updates to it this continuous feedback loop starting strategic drivers to the ServiceNow roadmap will make sure ServiceNow delivers the right outcomes at the right time for a demand management process to be effective you should deliver value fast and be able to respond to changing business needs the first step is to divide the roadmap into smaller increments of work for example using a services or product focused approach step 2 emphasize speed not just in delivery but in decision making by delegating prioritization decisions to product teams lastly similar agile principles should be applied for the entire roadmap which includes periodic reviews and recalibration of the roadmap against enterprise goals now that you understand the demand management process what should you do next first take time to review the success checklist and playbook we have on the customer success center these materials will give you more details on the demand management process second review your current demand management process against our recommended practice are there areas where you could do better are there any quick wins you can aim for this is where the insights and expert tips from our playbook will be helpful lastly create a plan to roll out or refine your demand management process remember it's important to work on the right things at the right time to realize the full potential from your ServiceNow investment and a good demand management process is a critical step on that journey for more information or advice contact your service now team thank you for watching