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March 10, 2021

Upgrade the ServiceNow Platform: A 5-Step Process



Organizations need to stay current with the ServiceNow (News - Alert) platform to take full advantage of its new features and functionalities. Staying current will help achieve business outcomes and stay up to date with the latest ServiceNow environment. ServiceNow upgrade also helps organizations maximize investment, avoid issues inherent on unsupported release, and reduce the risk of encountering resolved problems in the new version. Most organizations take up to six weeks to complete the ServiceNow upgrade process.



Careful planning and understanding of each of the critical business functionalities available in the ServiceNow instance and its performance can contribute to a successful upgrade. The planning and knowledge will help set the IT and business users' expectations and determine how much time the organization must dedicate to preparing, implementing, and testing the ServiceNow upgrade. Organizations need to upgrade the ServiceNow instance once a year to comply with the companies mandate of not supporting the platform older than two versions.

Step-by-step Process to Perform ServiceNow Upgrade

To ensure that organizations complete the ServiceNow upgrade procedure successfully, they need to follow a step-by-step approach to track and plan.

Step 1: Practice project management practices

Apply smart project management practices such as identifying stakeholders, assessing risks, estimating time, and allocating resources when upgrading the existing ServiceNow instance. It is also essential to identify and use a project management application to track and communicate its progress. ServiceNow provides a Project Portfolio Management application that can help you manage all the projects from a single dashboard.

To complete the step, you also need to complete three critical things:

  1. Set project timelines and phases
  2. Allocate the right resources at the right time
  3. Implement a project communication plan

Step 2: Follow the standard upgrade process

ServiceNow has documented the upgrade process for all the customers. Organizations can either take help from the vendor or follow the established process and release notes for upgrading their current ServiceNow instance.

Organizations can follow the below phases to complete this step:

  1. Plan the upgrade process and read release notes
  2. Prepare the instance
  3. Schedule ServiceNow upgrade and verify upgrade configurations
  4. Upgrade and validate one non-production instance
  5. Upgrade and validate other non-production instances
  6. Prepare to upgrade the production instance
  7. Upgrade the production instance

Step 3: Review changes 

ServiceNow platform is configurable. The platform doesn’t overwrite changes. Instead, it reviews the skipped changes to make clear decisions on what changes they can revert, merge, or continue. Changes fall under two categories:

  • Newly created records that don’t put organizations at risk as they don’t conflict with the past functionalities.
  • Review changes to the out-of-box records individually. Organizations need to determine whether the ServiceNow upgrades should be accepted as-is or coding is required to handle the upgrade's customizations.

Step 4: Create and maintain test plans

Prepare a plan for testing before deploying the new instance in the organization. The organization must plan how to keep track and what they need to do when testing the instance.

Organizations also need to test deployed applications and functionalities after each upgraded instance. It is also essential to prepare test plans before ServiceNow upgrades when configuring and customizing the applications. 

ServiceNow recommends performing both manual and automated testing. Manual testing can find issues such as poor user experience, which automated testing can’t see. ServiceNow provides a test management application for manual testing and Automated Test Framework for automated testing.

Step 5: Streamline Future ServiceNow Upgrades

Organizations must follow best practices and check vulnerabilities before upgrading the instance. By doing so, organizations can reduce the number of issues to remediate. Organizations must follow the following steps to streamline future upgrades:

1. Assess and understand the cost of customizations

Use the experience and expertise of vendors to determine which requirements require customizations and which can do with simple configurations.

2. Use best practices

Exercising the best practices for upgrading the instance reduces the risk of performance, scalability, manageability, and usability.

3. Conduct configuration review

Review configuration to address issues related to upgrading, management, scalability, and performance. Organizations can conduct reviews either before or after implementing ServiceNow.

Why do you need to upgrade?

Upgrading the ServiceNow instance to the latest version helps organizations take advantage and complete control over the latest functionalities and features. ServiceNow itself stresses that the organization upgrading to the newest version will have a more secure instance, availability of latest features, and better performance.

Follow the best practices and steps mentioned in the blog to upgrade your ServiceNow instance smoothly. Before upgrading, ensure that you are fully prepared and understand the changes that will happen with the latest version. Look out for the right partner to confidently help you sail through and optimize the instance's performance.

 

Author Name: Arun R Nair

Arun is an experienced professional with a specialized focus on Infrastructure Management and Optimization, Platform Development and Administration, Automation Framework, and Methodologies. He is a certified ServiceNow Administrator with a strong customer service orientation and a proven track record of implementing ServiceNow while ensuring compliance and effective process controls.

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