After more than 30 ServiceNow implementations — some lasting just a few weeks, others stretching beyond a year — one truth has become increasingly clear to me:

The success of a ServiceNow project rarely comes down to technical people, project managers, or even the platform itself. It comes down to the Product Owner.

That might sound controversial. After all, ServiceNow implementations are technical by nature. But here’s the thing — while the technical side is often straightforward, the real complexity lies in understanding and aligning business needs.

You can have the most capable development team in the world, but without someone ensuring the work delivers genuine value to the business, you’re simply building features — not solutions. And that’s where the Product Owner (PO) comes in: the conduit between the business and the implementation team.