6 ServiceNow Integration Use Cases to Improve Software Delivery Efficiency
Our previous blog post on ServiceNow integration focused on the #1 most popular use case — help desk to Agile planning for collaborating on problem resolution. And as ServiceNow continues to expand beyond IT service management to project and portfolio management, Agile development, and enterprise DevOps, additional use cases continue to emerge. These integration patterns utilize cross-tool integration to improve the flow of work, prevent data discrepancies and eliminate costly human error.
This article will introduce you to six more ServiceNow integration patterns that are helping organizations to improve software delivery efficiency and business outcomes.
#2 ServiceNow to Agile Planning & Issue Tracking to Test Management: Improve Ticket Resolution
Similar to use case #1, this integration problem focuses on improving ticket resolution. However, this use case incorporates the testing teams as well to further accelerate resolution time.
ServiceNow trouble tickets that require engineering involvement are automatically created in the developer’s Agile planning or issue tracking tool as a new issue or story. The ticket can be routed to the correct development team and tool based on fields like Configuration Item or Assignment Group. The assigned developer and the support engineer can exchange information about the issue directly on the artifacts themselves, from within their own tools.
As the issue progresses through development and test, its status is updated in ServiceNow to keep the support engineer in the loop.
Here’s an example of this pattern in ServiceNow, Jira and Micro Focus ALM:
And here’s another example of this pattern in ServiceNow, Azure DevOps (VSTS) and Micro Focus ALM:
#3 ServiceNow to Agile Planning & Issue Tracking: Improve Work Prioritization and Transparency
Developers have to support both planned work and unplanned work, for example from incidents assigned to them from ServiceNow. Integration between ServiceNow and Agile planning tools allows developers to see all their assigned work in one single view and prioritize where to focus. At the same time, the status of the incident is visible to practitioners working in ServiceNow.
#3 Demand Management to Agile Planning: Drive Feature Creation from PPM
Integration between ServiceNow’s PPM module and your developers’ Agile planning tool helps kick-off story breakdown faster. When a demand matures into a project in ServiceNow PPM, the integration automatically creates a corresponding feature in Jira, Azure DevOps Server (TFS), VersionOne, CA Agile Central or other Agile planning tools. There’s no manual trigger or handover — rather the feature appears in the Agile planning tool so the development workflow can begin.
Similarly, ServiceNow PPM can be integrated with requirements management tools like Jama or DOORS, so business analysts and product owners can break down programs into requirements before flowing them over to developers.
#4 Release Automation to ServiceNow: Automate Change Requests
This popular integration pattern automates tasks as part of the release pipeline. For example, when a build is ready for deployment (e.g. a CI/CD tool like Jenkins completes a successful build), Tasktop automatically creates a change request in ServiceNow. The change request’s manifest will include a list of the stories in the build, each linked to the story artifact in the Agile planning tool, to facilitate the approval process.
#5 ServiceNow Agile Development (SDLC) to another Agile Planning & Issues Tracking Tool: Improve Performance Management
It is not uncommon for an organization to have multiple Agile planning and issue tracking tools, with some teams or roles using ServiceNow Agile Development (SDLC) and others using another tool, like Jira, VersionOne, Targetprocess or Planview LeanKit. This integration pattern creates one master view of the activity across all Agile planning tools, by flowing the epics, stories, bugs, sub-tasks and other artifacts into one of the tools as ‘master’. Reports are run off the master, encompassing data from all Agile tools for one source of truth.
Here is an example of this integration pattern in ServiceNow, Jira, and VersionOne:
#6 Test Management to ServiceNow Agile Development: Improve Defect Resolution
Integrating test management tools such as Micro Focus ALM or QC, or QASymphony with ServiceNow Agile Development improves alignment between software engineers and test engineers. Defects opened in test management are automatically created in ServiceNow Agile Development as new issues in the appropriate project’s board. Changes the developer makes to the defects’ status are visible to the QA engineer in test management.
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Written by: Jill Tempelmeyer
Originally published at https://www.tasktop.com on March 6, 2020.
