Everyone is moving to the cloud, why are you keeping your projects on-site?

The ServiceNow ecosystem is a seller's market. There is much more project demand than supply of talent. That means everything matters when trying to staff a project. The rate, the job description, and, most of all, the location. On-site or remote? Your flexibility here is key to getting the best for your project.

In this market, where you’re practically begging quality talent to take your money, introducing hurdles to that process dramatically lessens your ability to attract top talent. Working on-site is one of those hurdles. It’s inconvenient, it’s disruptive, it requires travel, and it impacts productivity. And impacting my productivity, costs you money, it costs you time, and it might cost you success - something you want to avoid at all costs.

So how do you determine if your project should be on-site or remote?

If your company has a security policy that doesn't allow remote work, then the project should be on-site. That's it. Every other ServiceNow project can be done remotely. However, there are some ServiceNow projects where the chance of success can increase with an on-site kick-off.

ITOM projects typically benefit from an on-site kickoff to establish working relationships across the IT Team and work out the kinks with credentials.

Instance reboot projects can benefit from an onsite kickoff as well - typically for workshops and to ensure that requirements are thoroughly vetted prior to build. No one wants to reboot again, best to get it right this time around.

Long-term engagements - if you're working together for 6 months or longer an onsite kickoff might be a good idea just to establish working relationships and the culture of the project. Yes, even projects have culture. We'll talk about that another time.

Projects with multiple decision making stakeholders - If you have several departments engaged in the project and they all have input, it's great to have an on-site kickoff to establish the culture of the project and, to be frank, the decision making hierarchy. Conflicts between requirements will arise, meeting and spending time with each of the stakeholders up-front makes it easier to mediate those conflicts and create solutions when the need arises.

Everything else should be fully remote. No exception.

If the issue you have with remote projects is the struggle with meetings and calls - use video conferences instead of phone conferences. Video has been shown to decrease meeting time by up to half, increase engagement, and increase the quality of decision making. Practically every company has this technology and it's chronically underutilized. Use what's available.

One last thing to consider - in this supply-constrained market - are you getting the best available talent for your onsite projects? With IT project failures already trending over 65%, don't add more hurdles to your success by limiting your pool of available talent.

Save time, money, and failure and think remote first. You'll thank me for it later.

Cory Wesley is the founder of Tekvoyant Inc, a ServiceNow Technology Partner focused on delivering business value using the ServiceNow Platform, the co-host of the ServiceNow focused podcast CJ & The Duke, and can also be found on Twitter.