hey everybody we're just about ready to start the webinar here we're going to wait for a few more folks to join us but we'll get started in about a minute or two let's go ahead and get started here hello and welcome to our webinar on the best practices for the project and portfolio management journey my name is Neil mefferd and I'll be your moderator for today's session in today's webinar we will cover three topics first we want to give you a quick overview of Coe Vesak and why we are uniquely positioned to be your partner for a ServiceNow ppm implementation second we want to give you an overview of the ServiceNow ppm suite and third we will build on what was covered in our webinar 1 by demonstrating how to set up detailed project plans templates and portfolios in service now the ServiceNow ppm suite is a set of powerful tools that can help transform your organization's PMO it's starting with too much change too fast can cause severe organizational heartburn and we're stopped a PMO transformation in its tracks almost as fast as a lack of sponsorship today we will continue to expand on our recommended approach for a ServiceNow ppm implementation the journey if you will before we get started let me introduce the team as I previously mentioned my name is Neil mefferd and I will be your host for today's webinar my role at Co Vesak is director for client delivery and I have over 20 years of industry experience specializing in software development and systems integration projects as well as helping companies establish sound demand management project management and portfolio management processes joining me today is Lynn Reynolds who will provide you with an overview and demo of the ServiceNow project in portfolio management suite Lynn has over 18 years of public and private IT industry experience including project and vendor management and over 11 years of ITSM process design process improvement and delivery experience when is ITIL foundations PMP and scrum master certified as well as a certified ServiceNow implementation specialist as we go through today's session if you have any questions regarding what is being presented please feel free to type your question into the question box located on your screen we'll do our best to answer questions at the end of the session but if for some reason we are unable to get to all of the questions we will follow up via email also the contents of this webinar will be posted on the Kovac website at wkyt.com feel free to review and share with other members of your organization who were unable to attend today's session with that let's get started Kovac is a full-service consulting firm and silver ServiceNow partner headquartered in Kirkland Washington we employ over 200 senior level consultants averaging 15 plus years of professional consulting and IT operations experience and have been delivering service management solutions since 2001 Kovac expertise is organized into three practice areas our IT operations services practice focuses on developing standardizing and operating IT operations functions including cloud and enterprise infrastructure security operations applications administration and operations build and run our project delivery services practice focuses on providing project leadership to deliver complex IT solutions Kovach experience in project management ensures compliance quality and milestones aligned to our clients lifecycle practices finally our IT service management practice focuses on assessing defining and implementing optimized IT Service Management solutions with ServiceNow being our only service management solution partnership with over 100 successful ServiceNow projects Kovac is a unique partner in that we combine deep ServiceNow platform expertise with a specialized practice area focused on creating ppm solutions and project delivery our people first practical approach and guidance to projects have allowed us to achieve an average CSAT score of nine and hundreds of clients like you see here who love us with that I will now turn the webinar over to Lyn to talk to you about the ServiceNow ppm suite and cove essex recommendations for containing your p.m. journey and provide you with a live demo of part two of this transformation Thank You Neil welcome everyone and thanks for joining us today so what you see on screen is a high-level view of service males IT business management suite it consists of eight applications focused on making organizations more competitive and innovative service now project portfolio management aligns project investments and consolidates resources and project data into a single system this allows organizations to plan strategically and improve the effectiveness of their project management activities being a part of the ServiceNow IT business management portfolio enables a seamless and Indian process for initiating project request and balancing the project portfolio it also gives organizations a single system to track GSM and ppm work and allows you to spend more time getting value from your tools rather than time learning how to use your tools Kemetic recommends approaching the PPF suite in a phased manner on screen you see our recommended three phase approach to evolve the PPS suite to get your business to a fully functioning portfolio manager organization which incorporates the operational costs and enterprise resource demands how far you evolve the platform and which elements are activated is ultimately up to you and based on your business needs so the goals of phase one are to collect ideas and demand from the organization have a repeatable way to decision demand and to create a portfolio of projects with enough information to support executive reporting the goals of phase 2 of our recommended journey are to introduce program management as another means of classifying and organizing projects introduced to agile development and to distinguish between agile and waterfall phases and to fully understand how to build and track detailed project schedules and understand how to begin individual project status reporting the activities in this in phase 3 close the loop on projects budget cost tracking resource planning and allocation across project and non project work and time tracking so our first ppm webinar covered capturing ideas from the business for potential new projects decisioning ideas and creating demand records adding cancellation to the demand record to support prioritizing and qualifying demands creating projects from approve demand demand adding waterfall agile or test phases and key milestones to new projects and building a project portfolio and associated project records with the performance portfolio this webinar ticks off words the first one left off creating the project plan in more detail via input and data entry building project schedules and examining project calculation settings looking at project phases Waterfall our agile test with an emphasis on agile development sprint building project task relationships and managing the WDS setting a baseline creating templates from projects and refining existing templates copying all or part of the project and projects to programs and turning on status reports so with all that let's get started right now can you see my screen again it looks great okay that's it so I have logged in as Diana temple who is a project portfolio manager first thing we want to do is take a look at the entire project application in ServiceNow so over on the left I have project applications and all of the associated modules within the project application the first application consists of portfolio management program management project management project tasks agile and settings which is primarily used by system admins to customize project there's also a getting started link which links the ServiceNow product documentation as well as a CIO web map which is a visualization of projects along a time horizon and then the PMO dashboard which you see on screen which is a considerable dashboard that captures key statistics about all the projects across the processes for let's start in there is three primary ways to create a new project you can import one from Microsoft Project you can build one from scratch or you can copy an existing service mail project we will explore all three methods in this webinar first let's start by importing a Microsoft Project file into ServiceNow links the Microsoft Project file that I intend to import you'll see it has a duration of 86 days note the start date finish date we have those days mobile activities some sensors activities individual project activities project interdependencies and project task duration so to this file into ServiceNow I will go to the project module and go to import I'm going to navigate to my project file that we just examined you have the option of importing the file into ServiceNow as a standalone project and you can also import this file into an existing project now click import all right so here's the file that we just imported there will be that the project name has been carried over we have an auto-generated unique project number the state is in the pending state and the calculation value is set to automatic we'll talk a little bit more about calculation settings in a second no medicines the schedule is set to the project management schedule this is the default ServiceNow project management schedule it is a basic 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday schedule with a built in lunch period and it does not include holidays you always have the option of creating your own project schedule or schedule and associating individual projects with those now I'm going to click on the planning console to go and examine the project file details collective recommends using the planning console to really look at the WUF structure and add in your new task and the project workbench for adding and removing phases as well as milestones yes collapsed just going to expand a few sections out here do you see that the start date the finish date the duration the WPF structure is one of the phase level activities interdependencies and task durations have all come in as part of the import you can also see that your Gantt after the write has been populated so you have a visual representation of the schedule as well go back way to create a project number one now let's go to create new so I'm back over here on the left underneath project and occur click on the create new button now you have the option of either going ahead and creating this project on your own typing in specific values for you also can apply simple the formula I apply my template I would like to talk a little bit about the calculation settings so as I mentioned we've got automatic we also have manual service now has those two methods of calculating project progress manual calculation means that updates to the project schedule are not calculated automatically and based on phases do not automatically reflect any changes from dependent child path test start and finish dates will needs to be managed by you new projects created from the project workbench are set to manage calculation by default that they can be changed to automatic automatic calculation means just like it sounds any updates to the project schedule are calculated automatically and governed by the relationships between activities new projects created by importing files or by applying a template I set to automatic by default and you can change it to manual or you can change it off of automatic epical you save the project automatic is the method you should use to take advantage of the project scheduling engine let's apply our template I'm going to give our new project a name I'm going to go ahead and let it default to today's start date select that template and then hit OK now you'll notice some things would happen we've got the project things that we just typed in the project manager has been set as I an example that came over as part of the template so you can use templates of project assignments if you wish comes in with a default description again it's set to a pending state it has not been started yet the calculation setting is set to automatic and that's grayed out so it cannot be changed into Keynes and the template if using the project management schedule we see it's got tomorrow start date and a planned in date that is driven by the duration every activities within the template but now let's associate our new project with a portfolio or to choose the operations portfolio you also have the ability to associate projects with programs now my program choices are going to be limited to those programs associated with the portfolio but now the template has created phases within the WBS but let's see how to add a new phase I'm going to right mouse click and save the project and then you're going to go to the project voice inch now this is where I can add phrases by type you'll see the phases that have come in with the project template if I click the plus sign I have the ability to add additional savings and I have three types of phases that I can add I can add a waterfall phase which allows me to add project tasks I can add an agile phase which allows me to add user stories as part of the agile and scrum and I have a test phase that I can use to associate test plans and test cases with this project file but for the purposes of this demonstration let's go ahead and add a new waterfall task and I'm going to call it customer demos I'm going to give it a start page let's put it out in here into August and we'll give it a the duration and hit submit so we've got our customer demos phase here kind of during configuration that allows us to add some additional activities to share the work that happens for this customer demo now I'm going to go to the planning console if I click this drop-down arrows arrow next to project workbench I have the ability to create a new project which again will create a new project in our manual calculation settings and I can also toggle over to the planning console and that's what we'll do so now I've got my customer demo phase that I just added no notice these arrows at the top I can use this arrow to actually place my phase elsewhere in the Debbie px you can use that to move them up and then I also have these other icons that allow me to add tasks above and below fifth activity so I'm going to add a task below customer demo we will call this link design number one and I'm going to indent it which subordinates it to the phase activity and then I'm going to add a second task below that one and call it to month or two and then I have the ability to put a dependency in between these two activities well I will just so you'll notice this has that created tendency between demo number one and demo note number two you'll see that's reflected both on the Gantt chart as well as in the Pink's alright so once I'm happy with my hola project plan I'm going to go ahead and that to the actual project record so what I'm happy with my overall plan I have the ability to take a baseline of my plan and I can do that in a couple of ways I can either click the Create baseline down a syrup from the religious links at the bottom of the form or I can go to the baselines related lists and click the Create based one button here so I will creating a bit on here you can call it hydric review board approval the team members with the IT project manager role are able to different projects and nested projects cannot have baselines baselines are only allowed for top-level projects so now that we have created a baseline angle feeds that nearly creative is going down here and I related list let's talk a little bit about States so you'll notice that the project is still in a pending state as soon as I start the project it's going to move to work in progress and then once all the activities are completed it will move to closed complete you have a couple of other clothes states that you can use to show closure of a different nature you also have open available to project managers to use perhaps to use water project is either the planning stage to look pre pre started if I close all of the project activities the project closes likewise if I course the project all the project activities close all right I'm going to start my project now you'll notice this has flipped from pending to work in progress so let's just say that our project is underway I told my requirements gathering session I've collected my user stories I performed sprint planning and I've associated my stories with Sprint's I'm going to go to the planning console and here I have an agile phase created called configuration within my project on I know it's an agile phase by virtue of this icon if I click on the configuration agile things I'll get this little pop-up screen and from here I have the ability to add or 58 sprints with this space so I can do this from the sprint related list on the pop-up screen I've got a couple of Sprint's created I will bring over and if I open up one of these prints I'll see the stories that are associated with that sprint as well okay likewise I have a testing phase here in my project schedule and I know what the testing phase again because of this icon if I open up the testing phase I get again another pop out screen and in this view this allows me to associate test plans and test cases with this testing phase if you have standard test plans say for common releases or upgrades that you do all the time this is when you can associate those common test plans but if you need to create a new test case specific to this endeavor you can do it right here from this related list so here if I go down to test cases and I click new I have the ability to again create a new test case associated with the test plan and have that recorded as a part of the pressing things back in the planning console the next thing I want to do is I want to adjust a couple of states so let's say we are going to move our go-live out of it we're going to shift the start a out by a couple of weeks okay so if I go to the little three dots there lifts up here I have the ability to show my baseline remember the baselines are just created a little while ago I have the ability to show my baseline as compared to the current plan so the baseline is a little hard to see on screen it shows it as a light gray line and then the current plan shows up as the blue bars so here we can see what the original data that your life was versus what it is today all right there's one last way to create a new project in service now I'm going to take one of the projects that we've been working on and create a copy so if I right mouse click up in the top of the project record I have the option to either process the entire project or copy a part of the project in this case I'm going to copy the entire project another handy feature is also the task creator if you were building at your WBS structure at SS an option other than the planning console you can actually insert tasks using a test creator and also define them as either a sequence or linked or not linked all right so I've now created a copy of the original project as a new project and again it's brought over the title that I just typed in its honored the start date that the planned duration that comes from the task the duration of the task as well as the task interdependencies let's go back to the project that made baseline here and let's just say it's status report day and I want to create a weekly status report from my project if I go to the status reports tab I have the ability to create the new status report to this project when I click the new button you'll see specific pieces of the project information abroad over the title of the project or the name of the project the project manager that's assigned the current start date or the plan start a plan and date when the project actually started if it has been started at the unique ID all of these things are brought over to the status report records so you don't have to retype them I'm going to pick a status date will stay Friday right makes me really good day for status reports and we've got five tabs overall status schedule cost resources and scope that allows you to specify particular information about this project so overall status as a project manager I can then it's a bit subjective but I can say yes my projects on track or it's in danger no it's not on track by choosing green red yellow and red I have the ability to put in an executive summary additional comment list out achievements and upcoming activities that's the first tab the second again I have green yellow red option around schedule and I can say why I picked the color that I picked and then so forth across cost resources and scope and then whenever I'm happy with the report I simply click Submit I'm actually going to go to status report that I think that I created a moment ago or on another on another day so this project status report can be exported also supports can be exported to PDF and so they can be either printed or mailed if you need a hard copy or available copy to go to project executives and then likewise if you're in this view of all status reports it also gives you a nice overall view of overall project status across the different size areas from project to project project status to project status get back to my project here the last thing I want to show you is if this is a type of project that I do quite often and I want to turn it into a template I have the option of taking the project and turning it into a template down here under related links by choosing save as a new template so when I do that it's going to carry over specific information from my project into the template such as the main descriptions the text activities the interdependencies all of those kinds of things and then it's there selection for the future for future project interest please all right so that concludes our webinar on how to build and manage detailed project plans with the ServiceNow design I'll turn it back over to Neil thanks Lynn hopefully today then will allow you to see the clear benefits of using the ServiceNow ppm suite ServiceNow ppm can not only replace a spreadsheet you're using to track projects but it can also be the one and only tool you use in your organization for both project and non project work just a reminder if you have a question for today's session please submit it using the question box on your screen we will do our best to answer as many questions as possible but should we run out of time we'll follow up via email if you'd like additional information about ServiceNow ppm or the topics covered in this webinar please feel free to send us an email at ServiceNow ATCO Vesak comm with that let's get started with some questions alright Lyn looks like I have a question here the first one I have is what do the colored dots or bullets represent in the planning console view of the project schedule okay Mel assuming that you are talking about these little dots right here the blue dots means that a task has a date constraints such as it's set to start on a specific date or another type of test constraint if there were a red dot a red dot would indicate something about the task such that such as the passive late all right let's see the next question we have is when creating the project schedule can you add dependencies at the phase level rather than the task level you can you can add projects or test dependencies between any types of tasks and those dependencies will be honored as long as the taxes I'm started in other words if the phase was not started I can put a dependency between one phase another and it will adjust the date only if it's not yet ready excellent all right we have another question here on statuses are the health statuses in the status reporting inter related to one another that's an awesome question but the health status is the red and the green and yellow are completely subjective so a PM can pick any of the health statuses that are available you do have the option of configuring rules you know programming rules behind those statuses the change management module of service values is something very similar so this calculations where essentially the change requests your answers a set of questions those questions have numeric values on the backend and they drive a risk score you could take a similar approach here and actually have a set of questions that the project manager to answering that judge those colors or drives are the kinds of values but out of box it's simply a pick list of a basic red green yellow and assesses p.m. to pick the value that best represents the project all right fantastic all right let's jump over to one on templates here when saving a project as a template does a project mean to be in a closed status or can you do it anytime you can save a project as a template anytime during the project lifecycle it does not have to be closed all right well dovetailing to that on the template one what pieces of the project are added to a template so we saw a little bit of this a moment ago but the task attachment in shifts the duration of the project manager again kind of the overall structure of the WDS and the overall timeline are is brought over as a template fantastic let's see here just looking through next we got here is on portfolios can a project be in more is in one portfolio yes a project can be in more than one portfolio but only one portfolio will be displayed on the project one all right looks like we got a couple more questions here is there a place to capture project notes on the project record there are a couple things on the project website you have a notes tab there are also related lists for risks and issues as well as yes so we have the regular notes that come with any pretty much any task type inside ServiceNow and adding notes to this area actually adds it to the overall log or the diary of this particular record and you can see a little bed in a all of you consider made to this record if they're added there throughout the lifecycle of the are the lifespan of the project and then likewise you have risk and issues available to you to capture for specific and reportable information fantastic all right I have one on project states here our project stage configurable they are you want to take care of that though for those of you who may be using ServiceNow States are the drive a lot of functionality on the back end so we do want to be careful when you're making just insisting because they are hard-wired to have kind of the functionality of the tool but you can absolutely suppress space pipe space you don't want to fear they'll never use add additional space also for the conservatory definitely take care enjoy great well fantastic well I think that's all the questions that I've seen come in so far Lyn so let's go ahead I and move on here we want to thank everybody for joining us that will conclude today's session we do ask you keep an eye out and and a reminder that we will have additional upcoming webinars in the future so thank you for joining us and that concludes today's webinar thanks everyone