In the previous blog in this series, we talked about the three pillars of Impact platform health, and how these work together to help you prevent, identify, and correct platform health and performance issues. In this blog, we take a deeper dive into preventing health issues.

The best way to prevent platform health issues is to follow ServiceNow leading practices when implementing or developing on the ServiceNow platform. With Experts on Demand, you have instant access to ServiceNow experts who can help you do this. Here are some of the ways that they can help (not a comprehensive list):

• Technical governance. This is about following leading practices and ensuring that everything you implement or develop on the platform complies with these. By putting strong technical governance in place, you prevent platform health issues and reduce risks. Your Impact Squad includes a Platform Architect who will help you optimize your architecture and solution designs to improve manageability, performance, security, and upgradability. They’ll also help you establish technical governance processes to strengthen your technical decision-making and enforce leading practices. A great way to get started is to use the Technical Governance Accelerator included with your Advanced or Total Impact subscription.
• Data management and governance. The health of your ServiceNow instances doesn’t just depend on the technical implementation. You also need to make sure that your data is complete, well-structured, up-to-date, and secure. This requires a well-defined data management and governance strategy. Once again, ServiceNow experts can help you here. The Data Management and Governance Accelerator teams you up with ServiceNow experts who will assess your current data management and governance practices and provide specific recommendations on how to strengthen them based on leading practices.
• Implementer and developer training. If you’re implementing new ServiceNow products or developing your own apps on the ServiceNow platform, it’s important to take the right implementation or development approach. This helps you to roll out apps more successfully, and it also ensures that you're following leading practices that promote platform health and performance. There’s a wealth of training on Now Learning for implementers and developers, including Certified Implementation Specialist (CIS) and Certified Application Development (CAD) career paths. Depending on your Impact package, you may be able to access this training at no additional cost.
• Design reviews. This is another Impact Accelerator that helps you prevent health and performance issues. With the Design Review Accelerator, ServiceNow experts will review one of your ServiceNow designs, which can either be for a new solution or one that you have already implemented. This helps you to make the best possible design decisions, so you achieve better scalability, maintainability, and upgradability. It also helps you to make the best use of the ServiceNow platform, so you avoid technical debt and future limitations.

In the third blog in this series, we explain how you can use these pillars to prevent health issues.