Lenses in Strategic Planning

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

3 minutes to read

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Summary of Lenses in Strategic Planning

Lenses in Strategic Planning provide tailored planning perspectives aligned with different organizational roles, enabling planning managers to prioritize and align work with strategic initiatives and goals. By selecting a lens, users adopt a specific viewpoint—such as organizational, product, or strategic investments—to create personalized portfolio plans that reflect their planning scope and responsibilities.

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Lens Structure and Usage

Each lens consists of multiple hierarchical entities representing planning levels within the company. Planning managers build portfolio plans at one of these levels and prioritize work items linked to that entity, such as epics, projects, or custom work types. For example, a department head can create plans at the department level within the Organization lens to manage and roadmap their team's prioritized work.

Customers can start with one of the nine pre-defined lenses or configure custom lenses with up to six levels, adapting the planning framework to their specific organizational needs.

Pre-defined Lenses and Their Roles

Organization: Company, Business Unit, Department levels for department or business unit heads to plan and track work delivery and alignment.
Product: Company, Product Models for product leaders and managers to plan, fund, and prioritize product-related work.
Digital Product: Application Model and related entities for digital product planning, integrated with ServiceNow Digital Product Release Workspace.
Strategic Investments: Company, Strategic Priority, Initiative, Strategic Program for strategy leaders and EPMO to oversee strategic initiatives.
Goals: For portfolio managers and business unit heads to create, track, and align work with defined business goals.
Value Stream: For value stream and ART managers to plan and prioritize work related to value streams.
Project Portfolio: For product and portfolio managers to manage project portfolios.
Business Capability: For enterprise architects to plan work based on business capabilities or applications; requires Enterprise Architecture Workspace.
Project Program: For portfolio and program managers to manage programs and related work.
Planning Item: Allows direct work planning with individual planning items without hierarchical structures.

Customization and Next Steps

Administrators can modify existing lens structures or create new ones to meet specific planning needs. Planning managers should leverage portfolio plans within these lenses to align work effectively with business strategy, ensuring prioritization and funding align with organizational goals.

Lenses represent planning perspectives, which would be different for planning managers at different levels in an organization. Lenses enable you to create personalized portfolio plans through which you prioritize and align work with high-level initiatives and goals.

Lenses overview

Lenses in Strategic Planning indicate a perspective in which you can plan and fund work. By selecting a lens, you choose a planning perspective to prioritize and align your work in. For example, if you're a department leader, you can choose the Organization lens. If you're a product manager, you can choose the Product lens.

Lens structure

Each lens in Strategic Planning consists of a structure that is made up of entities. Lens entities represent different levels of planning for your company. You can build portfolio plans at one of these levels.

The planning item types associated with the bottom entity of a lens represent the type of work that can be planned using these portfolio plans.

For example, the Organization lens has a Company, Business Unit, and Department as its entities. As the head of the Support department, you can create a portfolio plan at the department level. Then, you can prioritize the work that is assigned to the department and plan a roadmap for the prioritized work. This work can be in the form of epics, projects, demands, or any other custom type.

Get started with one of the pre-defined lenses, or build a custom lens structure, with up to six levels, to suit your planning needs.

Pre-defined lenses and their structure

Strategic Planning provides nine pre-defined lenses to get you started with building your portfolio plans - Project Portfolio, Project Program, Organization, Strategic Investments, Product, Digital Product, Value Stream, Goals, and Business Capability. Planning managers can use these lenses based on their role at the company.

Predefined lenses - Project Portfolio, Project Program, Organization, Strategic Investments, Product, Digital Product, Value Stream, Goals, and Business Capability. — Figure 2. Structure of pre-defined lenses


Lens	Planning levels (Lens entities)	Planning manager	Description
Organization	Company Business unit Department	Department head Business unit head	Plan and track the delivery of work in my organization and visualize how the work is aligned to various levels.
Product	Company Product models	Product leader Product manager	Plan, fund, and prioritize work from a product lens.
Digital Product	Application Model Product Feature Product Enhancement	Product leader Product manager	Plan, prioritize, and roadmap work for digital products. If the ServiceNow® Digital Product Release Workspace is installed, the planning items associated with the product enhancement appear in the Planning items tab of the Release scope page in Digital Product Release Workspace. For details, see Scope of a release.
Strategic Investments	Company Strategic priority Initiative Strategic program	Strategy leader EPMO	Plan, manage, and provide oversight for strategic initiatives or programs regardless of who is doing the work.
Goals	Goal	Portfolio manager Business unit head	Create, share, and collaborate on a portfolio plan for defined goals. Set targets for the goals to track their progress. Align, prioritize, and roadmap the work you must do to achieve them.
Value stream	Product model Value Stream	Value stream manager ART manager	Plan, fund, and prioritize work for a value stream.
Project Portfolio	Portfolio	Product manager Portfolio manager	Plan, fund, and prioritize work in your project portfolios.
Business Capability	Business capability Business application	Enterprise architect	Plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work based on your business capabilities or business applications. This lens can be used only if the ServiceNow® Enterprise Architecture Workspace is installed.
Project Program	Portfolio Program	Portfolio manager Program manager	Plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work in your programs.
Planning item	Planning items	Portfolio manager Program manager	Plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work directly with planning items, without configuring organization structure, programs, portfolios, or products.

If you're an admin, you can modify the structure for these pre-defined lenses or configure a new lens altogether based on your planning manager's requirements. For more information, see Lens configuration in Strategic Planning.
If you're a planning manager, learn about portfolio plans to start aligning your work with the business strategy. See Portfolio plans in Strategic Planning.