1. Build a phased program plan, identify quick wins
Success Pillar: State and measure your business goals

2. Success Pillars – Structure
State and measure your business goals
Actively lead the transformation
Get your ServiceNow foundations right
Create excitement, drive adoption 1
State your transformation vision and outcomes 1
Engage executive sponsor to drive change and remove roadblocks 1
Manage to
“Out-of-the Box” 1
Design an engaging self-service employee & customer experience 2
Build your business case 2
Find, manage, and coordinate capable, certified partners 2
Discover and map your service assets 2
Design an optimal agent and rep experience 3
Build a phased
program plan, identify quick win 3
Build dedicated, dynamic governance process, policies & team 3
Plan your architecture, instances, integrations and data flows 3
Create change management plan 4
Baseline and track performance, usage KPIs and metrics 4
Reimagine how you want work processes to flow 4
Plan for upgrades at least once a year 4
Build an internal team of ServiceNow experts & train users 5
Define and map out your business services 5
Build a community of champions 6
Manage platform demand

3. Step 1: Define your transformation journey*
Your implementation must support your organization’s desired business outcomes and transformation vision1. Ensure you clearly define and characterize your vision, expected outcomes, known obstacles, and current constraints before creating a ServiceNow implementation plan.
Identify expected business outcomes and obstacles in achieving them
Review the transformation vision1 and the business case2 documented for your Now Platform implementation to understand your desired future state and the expected business outcomes your CXOs care about. 
Assess your current ability to deliver expected business outcomes. Consider:
Interviewing process owners and service owners to understand process and workflow limitations
Interviewing service process users and developers to understand limitations of your existing tools and platforms
Define transformation phases in realizing your vision
Identify your short-term goals. Use the below questions:
At the minimum, which business objectives must be realized to justify investment in the Now Platform? 
Which business objectives are dependent on other objectives (for example, for increased employee satisfaction you need to first increase service delivery efficiency)?
Define 3-5 phases for your transformation journey that, when executed in sequence, will deliver on your transformation vision (focusing first on your short term goals that are necessary to realize your long-term goals). Below is an example of typical transformation journey phases our customers go through:
Phase 1: Build the foundation, enable transparency, and simplify — Goals: reduce OPEX, increase service delivery efficiency, and reduce downtime
Phase 2: Create consumer-grade experiences — Goals: reduce service delivery cycle times, increase employee satisfaction, increase service success rates
Phase 3: Innovate and drive digital business transformation— Goals: increase resource utilization, add new service revenue streams, and improve speed to market
Practitioner Insight: Defining your transformation journey phases is not simple. Work closely with ServiceNow and your ServiceNow partner3 for guidance and insights on how your peer organizations approach their transformation journey. 
1 If you don’t have these defined, refer to “State your transformation vision and outcomes” Success Checklist
2 If you don’t have a business case document, refer to “Build a business case” Success Checklist
3 Refer to “Find, manage, and coordinate capable, certified partners” for additional details on working with ServiceNow partners
 *Note: If your ServiceNow implementation goals are tactical and short-term in focus, i.e. based on a narrowly scoped business outcome, you can ignore Step 1. 
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

4. Step 2a: Prioritize the right Now Platform capabilities
Prioritize capabilities that not only help you deliver on your short-term goals (phase 1 of your transformation journey), but also build a robust foundation for  capabilities that drive future growth. For additional guidance, see the Success Playbook  “How to start the implementation journey with ServiceNow.”
Identify capabilities required for your business needs
Review Now Platform capabilities and products to understand their functionality and usage.
Use sites such as servicenow.com, Community,  and attend events such as SNUGs, Knowledge as research tools.
Partner with your ServiceNow account team for additional information and to see product demos.
Identify Now Platform capabilities that you need to build to realize your overall transformation vision and outcomes
Segregate the capabilities that are required to realize your immediate expected business outcomes (phase 1 of your transformation journey). Highlight those capabilities that you:
Currently don’t have any ability to deliver
Have basic work processes and data models in place to support, but aren’t necessarily effective 
Are already delivering at desired performance
Identify capabilities required to build a robust ServiceNow foundation
Depending on the ServiceNow products you plan to implement, identify which capabilities will help you build a robust technology and data foundation for additional capabilities to build upon and enable growth in future. Consider:
CMDB for high-quality and tightly scoped configuration data
Service Catalog for request management
Knowledge Management for process users
Incident reporting and Notifications
Identify bundles of capabilities that are highly dependent on each other for performance. For example: Service Mapping has a high-dependency on CMDB, Event Management, and Discovery. 
Practitioner Insight: Consider working with ServiceNow professional services and an implementation partner* to prioritize the right Now Platform capabilities and products based on ease of implementation and anticipated benefits for your organization.
 * Refer to “Find, manage, and coordinate capable, certified partners” for additional details on working with ServiceNow partners
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

5. Step 2b: Prioritize quick-wins
To demonstrate the value and benefits of the Now Platform early on, prioritize capabilities and service use cases that are easy to implement and, if realized early, will result in organization-wide exposure to ServiceNow and highly visible improvements in service performance and experience. 
Identify high-visibility, low-dependency capabilities
Among the capabilities identified for your transformation with ServiceNow, identify those that:
Promote broadest organizational exposure to the Now Platform interface (by engaging a large base of users for requirements development, acceptance testing, and usage). For example: Service Portal
Result in highly visible improvements in service experience. For example: Incident Management 
Ensure that the capabilities selected are simple to implement.
If the number of workflows that require assessment, consolidation, and streamlining to implement the capability is substantial, then look to other capabilities for a quick-win. 
Identify most important service use cases
Out of the capabilities identified in Step 2a, work with process owners to select ‘quick win’ improvement opportunities that:
Are based on common, most frequent service use cases (such as most common incidents, important knowledge articles, etc.)
Are simple to implement (involve no complex customizations or configurations)
Are low risk changes (do not impact mission critical processes, e.g.  processes that support accounting systems during the end of the fiscal quarter) 
Involve few roles in handoffs or process decisions
Create immediate efficiencies for users (like simple automation improvements for processes like password resets)
Would deliver highly visible improvements (improvements that would be easier to measure and use as a “success story”)
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

6. Step 2c: Frame your implementation roadmap
Before creating a program plan for the actual implementation, frame your Now Platform roadmap so it clearly documents your implementation priorities. Re-evaluate these priorities to ensure they incorporate a balance of capabilities that are required for a strong foundation, necessary to meet short-term goals, and quick-wins.
Frame your Now Platform implementation roadmap to clearly highlight implementation priorities
List out your implementation priorities for each phase (see step 1 for details on phases) based on capabilities and service use cases identified in Step 2a and step 2b. 
Reevaluate the implementation priorities in each phase to ensure they include a balance of: 
Capabilities required for a robust foundation for the next phase in the transformation journey*
Capabilities required to meet immediate business needs (based on where you are in the transformation journey)
High-visibility, low dependency capabilities that are easy to implement and help quickly demonstrate value
Ensure the capabilities that depend on other capabilities are prioritized for implementation in later phases ( i.e. after the foundational capability is implemented)
Highlight the most important, high-visibility service use cases as key milestones to achieve
Practitioner Insight: Knowing which capabilities and service use cases to prioritize is a critical step in planning for your transformation journey with ServiceNow. Work with your implementation partner to ensure you have identified the right priorities for starting your ServiceNow implementation, before planning on what you need for the actual implementation.
*Note: If you are implementing ServiceNow for a tactical solution to narrowly scoped business problem, then you can choose to ignore the capabilities necessary for a robust foundation.
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

7. 3. Plan for the implementation
Step 3a: Identify support activities required for implementation success
Successful ServiceNow implementations are supported by a comprehensive program plan that accounts for activities, beyond technical development, required to ensure effective performance, adoption, and usage of the platform. Define the technology and data integration, internal team training, organizational change management, and governance required for successful implementation of the priorities identified in Step 2.
Identify your technology and data integration needs
Identify enterprise systems and third-party applications that would require integration with the ServiceNow capabilities you prioritized in step 2
Identify the data you would need, and how you would allow access to it, for the Now Platform capabilities to function. For example, you may need to integrate data sources from discovery tools to support your ServiceNow CMDB 
Identify organizational change management (OCM) needs
Estimate the change management requirements for the capabilities you want to implement. Work with process owners to:
Quantify the level of process change required for process users and end-user
Estimate the resources needed to support change management activities required to drive adoption (such as championing to build awareness, go-live events) 
Identify technical governance needs
Work with your ServiceNow implementation partner to identify governance policies and standards required for successful implementation. Include:
Guidance on managing out-of-the-box (using customization vs. configurations)
UX/UI design standards
Performance expectation standards
Identify your training needs
Estimate the training requirements for:
The ServiceNow platform team to design, support, and maintain the capabilities implemented
Service providers to make the best use of the capabilities made available to them
Users to adopt and comfortably use the tools and services offered through the Now Platform
Practitioner Insight: Consider creating a ServiceNow center of excellence that consistently defines and monitors ServiceNow implementation standards and pre-requisites across the enterprise. Always aim to use out-of-the-box ServiceNow functionality, and avoid customizations unless they are absolutely needed to achieve desired business outcomes. 
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

8. Step 3b: Identify implementation resource needs
ServiceNow implementation is not just about the technology. It requires people with the right knowledge, skills, and experience to make process improvements, govern, and drive change. Account for both technical and support activities when estimating the resources required for successful implementation. 
Identify your time and resource needs
Estimate time and resources required to implement the capabilities prioritized in step 2. Consider to:
Engage with process owners to estimate time and resources required to make the process changes required 
Work with ServiceNow account management team and implementation partners for insights into industry average time to implement
Ensure to account for the below activities when estimating time and resource requirements*:
Requirements gathering and needs assessment
Architecture and experience design
Implementation and application development based on configuration and customization needs
Testing to ensure required performance
Time to train process users and end-users
Organizational change management needs
Ensure your ServiceNow implementation team incorporates the four most important skillsets for effective delivery—1) Program Management, 2) Business Process Consulting, 3) Solution Architecture, and 4) Organizational Change Leadership
Work with your implementation partner to determine if initial support for some of this expertise can be handled by the partner and then transitioned back to internal teams over time
Practitioner Insight: Define the role for your ServiceNow partner (for example, to provide product training, drive OCM, develop governance, etc.) before starting with the implementation, and account for that in your resource need estimates.  
 * Refer to “Build internal team of ServiceNow experts & train users” for best practices on who you should involve and for what. 
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

9. Step 3c: Document the implementation program plan
The implementation program plan defines how and when you plan to deploy different Now Platform capabilities in the implementation roadmap based on resources availability and support activities required for their success. It has clear milestones marked after every two to three months to indicate the value you hope to derive and gauge progress.
Document the implementation program plan
Document the program plan for Now Platform implementation (treat this document as an extension to the ServiceNow business case), in coordination with the Project Management Office (PMO), if you have one. Ensure to:
Review the list of capabilities to implement, quick-wins, support activities, and constraints
Logically re-sequence the implementation roadmap (identified in step 2) to create a time-bound implementation plan. Ensure you:
Sequence implementation based on time required and resource availability for support activities (identified in step 3a) along with the actual implementation
Prioritize early CMDB deployment to have the right data model in place to support other capabilities  
Prioritize quick-wins, especially capabilities for which you have already defined process and workflow maps or that have a broad and highly-visible impact
Balance and spread out change for end-users and process users across time (try to not implement capabilities that affect the same group in a 'big bang’)
Define milestones to achieve and demonstrate value every two to three months
Plan for no more than three years (which many not account for all the transformation phases defined in step 1)
Document all assumptions and risks associated in implementing the plan
Build consensus on the program plan with delivery leaders. Include the application owners, service owners, change management leaders, program managers, development leads, and test leads
Practitioner Insight: Don’t prioritize technical activities over support activities that can actually provide greater value. Ensure you have resources and executive support for developing a governance operating model, training and skill development, and organizational change management.
Practitioner Insight: Ensure you work with ServiceNow implementation partners and professional services to implement based on defined ServiceNow Implementation Methodology best practices.
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

10. Step 4a: Secure buy-in for the implementation program plan
To avoid any surprises during the implementation, ensure your executive sponsor and senior leadership team is aware of and support (in the form of funding and internal championing) the requirements and assumptions underlying the implementation roadmap and program plan. 
Secure senior leadership buy-in for the implementation program plan
Review your findings and decisions from step 1 to step 3 with your executive sponsor and the strategic governance team, if you have one. Ensure to:
Highlight assumptions and risks associated with the roadmap and program plan success 
Ask for feedback on additional dependencies or requests that you may have missed out
Highlight the support you anticipate to receive from ServiceNow partners throughout the implementation
Share the implementation program plan with CXOs and senior leadership team (e.g. function leaders). Ask if:
The plan will deliver against their business needs in time
Which value drivers (or capabilities) they would prefer to fast-track as opposed to others
Revisit the funding approved for your implementation to ensure you have enough for not just for your resource requirements but also to support your contract with a suitable ServiceNow implementation partner 
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

11. Step 4b: Socialize the phased program plan
To prepare your target audience for ServiceNow implementations, socialize your implementation program plan with the help of a comprehensive communication plan that not only highlights what’s next in the implementation roadmap, but also reinforces how the implementation will benefit stakeholders. 
Socialize the phased program plan
Create a communication plan to build awareness of the implementation program plan with process owners, process users, and end-users (work with the organizational change management (OCM) lead or team if you have one). Ensure to: 
Use multiple different channels for the communications. Consider "lunch and learns", one-on-one meetings, and all-hands meetings
Call out the change management activities planned to help them understand, adopt, and gain value from the Now Platform
Highlight “what’s in it for them”, i.e. how the capabilities planned will help them do their job better and more effectively
Reinforce messaging on the implementation roadmap (what’s done and what’s next) and benefits after every key milestone
Proactively answer all frequently asked questions
Give process owners and process users an opportunity and a clear path to highlight their concerns and questions
Ensure to report (at an organization-wide level) on the progress made and the value realized after every milestone. Consider: 
Conducting team celebrations to build excitement and awareness (what’s done and what’s next) around the progress made
Using forums such as company all hands meetings and bulletin boards to highlight the progress made
Practitioner Insight: Build an internal network of ServiceNow champions that can help organically build awareness, understanding, and commitment on ServiceNow implementation program plan.
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

12. Step 5: Continuously refine the program plan
The implementation roadmap (priorities to implement) and program plan (how and when you plan to implement the priorities) should be living documents. Ensure you re-visit the implementation roadmap and program plan frequently to incorporate lessons learned and account for new opportunities to create value for the enterprise.
Continuously refine the implementation roadmap and program plan
Re-evaluate the program plan after every key milestone (or every two to three months) to ensure it doesn’t limit flexibility. Ask the below questions:
Does the data model we’ve established limit flexibility, or does it support extension beyond our original use cases?
Do the security protocols we’ve established support other potential use cases with more stringent security requirements?
Do the standards we’ve put in place for group access, naming, or metadata limit our ability to extend the Now Platform to other use cases or functions?
Are we deploying  in a way that we can support Delegated ServiceNow Development (such as a new scoped application) outside the original function?
After every key milestone, get feedback from two to three process owners, process users, and end-users on their experience with the capabilities implemented
Meet with senior leaders every quarter (or after every key milestone) to confirm assumptions and desired outcomes/benefits are still accurate and identify new opportunities or capabilities to include in the roadmap
Partner with your ServiceNow account team after every release to identify new Now Platform capabilities to include in the implementation roadmap based on changing business needs and your organization's maturity with ServiceNow
Work with your strategic governance team  and ServiceNow partner to make changes to the implementation program plan (and the roadmap) based on your findings above and new demands
Steps
1. Define your transformation journey
2. Identify your implementation priorities
3. Plan for the implementation
4. Build support for the implementation plan
5. Continuously refine the implementation plan

13. KPIs and Stakeholders Key Performance Indicators Essential KPIs
# of approved and funded roadmap revisions per year vs. plan
# of approved Roadmap implementation plans delivered on-time, on-budget
% of Now Platform capabilities included in the roadmap that align with your transformation vision 
‘Nice to Have’
# of process users and end-users who are aware of the key milestones in the implementation roadmap
Stakeholder Map
Responsible/Accountable
ServiceNow Platform Owner
Executive Sponsor
CIO
CFO
Senior leadership
Consulted/Informed
Business Leaders
Process Owners
Service Owners
Application managers
Business Partners
ServiceNow Users (inform only)