Prioritizing portfolio plan work in Strategic Planning Workspace

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Prioritizing portfolio plan work in Strategic Planning Workspace

    The Strategic Planning Workspace in ServiceNow Yokohama release enables customers to review, add, update, and rank planning items within their portfolio plans. This functionality helps prioritize the right work at the right time by managing the work pipeline effectively.

    Show full answer Show less

    Prioritization views include List, Kanban, and Hierarchy formats, providing flexible ways to visualize and organize backlog items. Note that prioritization is available only for portfolio plans and primarily displays records from the Planning Item table and its child tables. To include projects or epics from other tables such as PPM Standard or Agile Development 2.0, integrations must be configured.

    Key Features

    • Add new planning items: Create backlog items directly on the Prioritization page based on your portfolio plan’s configuration.
    • Update planning item details: Edit item details, attach files, and collaborate with stakeholders in real time to facilitate backlog grooming.
    • MoSCoW prioritization: Categorize items as Must have, Should have, Could have, or Won't have to establish a baseline priority.
    • Rank planning items: Use drag-and-drop to reorder items and determine their priority sequence.
    • Prioritize items to roadmap: Set planning state to “Prioritized” to include items on the portfolio roadmap.
    • Open items in execution apps: Navigate directly to related records in PPM, Agile Development 2.0, or SAFe applications for execution.
    • Personalize views: Adjust display settings such as sorting, grouping, and column arrangements; these preferences apply to all users sharing the portfolio plan.
    • Apply filters: Use consistent filters across Prioritization, Roadmap, and Scoring views to focus on relevant data sets.
    • Reorder columns: Drag columns horizontally in List and Hierarchy views to customize the layout.

    Practical Considerations for ServiceNow Customers

    To fully leverage prioritization, ensure your portfolio plan includes integrated data sources if you want to manage projects or epics stored outside the Planning Item tables. Setting up integrations with PPM, Agile Development 2.0, or SAFe applications allows seamless visibility and navigation between planning and execution phases.

    Using the prioritization capabilities will help you maintain a well-groomed backlog, improve stakeholder collaboration, and maintain alignment between planning and delivery. Personalization and filtering options ensure your team works with the most relevant and organized data views.

    Review the work pipeline for your portfolio in Strategic Planning Workspace. Add, update, and rank planning items so that you can prioritize the right work for the right time.

    Prioritization views

    Prioritization page in Strategic Planning represents your backlog, showing the items of your work pipeline in List, Kanban, and Hierarchy views. For an overview of these views, see Prioritization in Strategic Planning.

    Note:
    The Prioritization feature is available only for portfolio plans.

    Planning items in the Prioritization tab

    By default, portfolio plans show only the records that are created within the Planning Item [sn_align_core_planning_item] table and its child tables. Any records stored in other ServiceNow AI Platform tables aren't shown unless an integration is established.

    Consider that you want to manage projects through a portfolio plan. Project records that are only stored in the Planning Item Project [sn_align_project] table are displayed in the Prioritization tab. But any projects created using the PPM Standard aren't shown by default because these project records are stored in the PPM Project [pm_project] table. To enable their display in Strategic Planning Workspace, set up integration with PPM so that the tables of Strategic Planning are mapped to the tables of PPM.

    The same is the case with Epics created using Agile Development 2.0 and SAFe applications. See Configuring Strategic Planning with PPM, Agile 2.0, and SAFe.

    Prioritization features

    On the Prioritization page, you can perform the following actions:
    Feature Description Example UI
    Add new planning items

    Add new items to your backlog directly from the Prioritization page.

    The type of planning items that you can create here depends on your portfolio plan configuration.

    Sample drop-down list actions showing options to select New epic and New project as a new planning item on the Prioritization page.
    Update planning item details

    Edit details of the planning items, add attachments, and collaborate on them with the stakeholders directly from the Prioritization page to facilitate smoother real-time backlog grooming.

    MoSCoW values

    Categorize planning items using the Must have, Could have, Should have, or Won't have (MoSCoW) values in the List and Hierarchy views. This categorization creates a baseline of priority that you can later use when you're grooming and prioritizing work for your portfolio.

    MoSCoW options for planning items in Strategic Planning Prioritization tab.

    Rank planning items

    		 Decide on the order of priority for the planning items by using the drag functionality to rearrange them.
    Prioritize items to roadmap Set the planning state of an item to Prioritized to add them to the portfolio's roadmap.
    Open the planning item in the Execution app

    If you're using ServiceNow PPM, Agile Development 2.0, or SAFe applications to execute the planned work, you can open the planning items in their own application.

    For example, if your planning item is an epic, you can navigate to the epic form directly from the Prioritization page.

    Open planning item in execution app from Prioritization page.
    Personalize the Prioritization page views

    Change the way that the Prioritization page is displayed so that you can view the information in the format that you need.

    All settings, such as row and column personalization, grouping, and sorting, are saved as the portfolio plan preferences. So, these settings are applied to all the users or user groups that the portfolio plan is shared with.
    Apply filters for Prioritization Apply filters to all the views of Prioritization, Roadmap, or Scoring so that you can view a consistent data set for your portfolio plan. Apply filters for Prioritization.
    Reorder the columns by dragging them horizontally Reorder the position of the columns on the List and Hierarchy view by dragging them horizontally. Reorder columns in prioritization by dragging.