Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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Okay serious question. We have been notified that we are about to start the process of migrating all service delivery functions to the ServiceNow platform. Currently we are using Microsoft SCSM, and everybody hates it.

Does anyone in this thread have experience with ServiceNow, and if so, are we going to hate it more or less than we currently hate SCSM?
 
I've used ServiceNow in three jobs over six years, and I hate it. I don't know how much of the crapulence comes from it being implemented poorly versus how much is inherent to the thing itself. The team that implemented SN for our company all quit immediately after they'd finished, and the team that was support SN for our company quit within three weeks of that. That's probably indicative of something or other.
 
I note the founders of ServiceNow started with Peregrine. It’s for the birds. Peregrine Service Centre sucked like a major hull breach in space. Swap tabs to confirm details of the issue for the resolution you’re typing and it throws away your input. It lasted a year or two before being replaced by CA Service Desk which looked good in comparison. That is not an endorsement of either. We had to replace IBMs Infoman as that lacked a GUI (it didn’t) and needed a weekly down period to organise its datasets (which the replacements also needed). The senior manager found it hard to believe that software salesmen lied to him.
 
Well this is going to be a fun process then.

Interestingly, they're asking for someone to take a 3-month secondment to join the implementation team. I'd consider it, but I haven't been in this position for very long and I don't like my chances of suddenly getting Higher Duties at this time.
 
You have to balance the possibility of gaining early knowledge and possibly giving some input to what would be needed, if allowed, versus moving away from a position you’re fairly new in and possibly being labelled as of “one of the c-words that f-worded this pile of S-word we’ve been lumbered with”.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Sigh. Yet again I'm going to have to explain to someone that if they put more than six different fields into their Excel pivot table it's going to be unusable. It'll be the size of a tablecloth and contain almost as much data as the detail tab it's being pivoted from.

Why can't people picture in their mind what they actually want before they ask for it?
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They want all the data, but in a table no bigger than a postage stamp.
 
Norman Alexander said:
They want all the data, but in a table no bigger than a postage stamp.
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What they really want is for The Answer to be handed to them, preferably as a "Yes" or "No". The data they're asking for, no matter how they manipulate it (or have me manipulate for them) won't actually give them the least bit of insight into what they actually need, which is to make a business decision. They're doing that thing where they put off deciding by just asking for more and more data, there's a name for that but I can't remember what it is.
 
arthwollipot said:
Okay serious question. We have been notified that we are about to start the process of migrating all service delivery functions to the ServiceNow platform. Currently we are using Microsoft SCSM, and everybody hates it.

Does anyone in this thread have experience with ServiceNow, and if so, are we going to hate it more or less than we currently hate SCSM?
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Yeah, we are have been using it for a couple of years now.

Good: It is a reasonable fit for help desk style operations.

Bad:
-- It is entirely unreasonable for doing anything else, like day-to-day or project work. You need to bodge processes to make "the stats" come out anywhere near reality.

-- It has a really poorly designed interface. The stuff you need to access often is never where you think it is. Get used to scrolling up and down a LOT.

-- It assumes one company or one department, one set of managed assets, one instance. No way to separate stuff neatly into separately managed compartments at this time.

-- They are trying to add all sorts of vaguely-related nice-to-have ideas to it, rather than making the base functions more user-friendly. It's...crenelated.
 
TragicMonkey said:
What they really want is for The Answer to be handed to them, preferably as a "Yes" or "No". The data they're asking for, no matter how they manipulate it (or have me manipulate for them) won't actually give them the least bit of insight into what they actually need, which is to make a business decision. They're doing that thing where they put off deciding by just asking for more and more data, there's a name for that but I can't remember what it is.
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Laziness?
 
arthwollipot said:
Well this is going to be a fun process then.

Interestingly, they're asking for someone to take a 3-month secondment to join the implementation team. I'd consider it, but I haven't been in this position for very long and I don't like my chances of suddenly getting Higher Duties at this time.
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But...but...but... That's the whole purpose of being IN the Public Service!! To get Higher Duties! The more of those you have, the more it counts to the next promotion. So go for it! Just make sure you get commensurate pay and the rating noted on your record.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Laziness?
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No, there's like an actual industry term for prolonging data collection in order to postpone making a decision, consciously or not. I'm sure it's in my Systems Analysis textbook over on the bookcase but that's like fifteen feet away and I'm too tired to look in it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
What they really want is for The Answer to be handed to them, preferably as a "Yes" or "No". The data they're asking for, no matter how they manipulate it (or have me manipulate for them) won't actually give them the least bit of insight into what they actually need, which is to make a business decision. They're doing that thing where they put off deciding by just asking for more and more data, there's a name for that but I can't remember what it is.
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"Analysis Paralysis" is one aspect of it.
 
alfaniner said:
Many years ago I created a COBOL accounting program that had tables of costs for local and national credit unions. Due to the large tables and space requirements, each item had to begin with an abbreviation. Doing a massive copy/paste I used CULO-xx for the local data. I'd used "NT" for the corresponding national data tag until I saw that massive paragraph of "MOVE CU(national data)-xx TO yy" commands. I changed it to something less... provacative.
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Not quite as provocative, but back in the mid 90's one of my deployments in the military was doing desktop support at Wing Headquarters. At one point they change our section name name to Wing IT. They changed it again when people began answering the help line “wing it”
 
At IBM UK in the 1980s we ran a few IMS systems on boxes known by a single letter so each got refered to as "tims" (IMS on T), "pims" (IMS on P) etc. Then at a meeting there was much humming and hawing when a female manager suggested another IMS be run on system Q. Apparently they managed to block it without ever quite stating why.
 
Back in the late 80's, when I was working with the transit authority in Sydney, they did that 'lets rename everyone's thing and they renamed the depot manager position as the Business Unit Manager...
Um....
Well it suited his personality at least, he was a bit of an AH...
 
Dabop said:
Back in the late 80's, when I was working with the transit authority in Sydney, they did that 'lets rename everyone's thing and they renamed the depot manager position as the Business Unit Manager...
Um....
Well it suited his personality at least, he was a bit of an AH...
Click to expand...

I once worked for an organization with offices in two locations. There was a mail room in each. With a head. The head of the mail room at the MacDonald Block was titled the MacDonald Block Head. ISTR he was actually an OK guy.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Yeah, we are have been using it for a couple of years now.

Good: It is a reasonable fit for help desk style operations.

Bad:
-- It is entirely unreasonable for doing anything else, like day-to-day or project work. You need to bodge processes to make "the stats" come out anywhere near reality.

-- It has a really poorly designed interface. The stuff you need to access often is never where you think it is. Get used to scrolling up and down a LOT.

-- It assumes one company or one department, one set of managed assets, one instance. No way to separate stuff neatly into separately managed compartments at this time.

-- They are trying to add all sorts of vaguely-related nice-to-have ideas to it, rather than making the base functions more user-friendly. It's...crenelated.
Click to expand...
This. There are worse products but people tend to know to avoid them.
 
lomiller said:
Not quite as provocative, but back in the mid 90's one of my deployments in the military was doing desktop support at Wing Headquarters. At one point they change our section name name to Wing IT. They changed it again when people began answering the help line “wing it”
Click to expand...
I worked as a consultant for <REDACTED> and their IT services in their Head Office were HOBITS.
It suited them, at least regarding the smoking, general obesity, hairiness, excessive eating, general unwillingness to work, or even move, without substantial reason, utter cluelessness of the world beyond their door, extreme resistance to change, collecting old and useless objects (seriously, how many non-functional NeXTs do you need to keep?), non-punctuality, avoidance of sunlight and fresh air (or indeed ventilation in general), distrust of strangers, and more.
 
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