Consulting on ServiceNow

Working with a graduate student team, we consulted with a University of Michigan facilities department to better implement ServiceNow for their workflows. I developed an interview protocol to identify both the ways in which the ticketing system worked well and also why it failed to support some teams. While conducting the interviews, we learned that the department's responsibilities were extensive. The customer-generated ticketing system functioned perfectly for teams with short turn-around times, but teams with long turn-around times, like construction teams, needed tools that offered them project management tools.  Tracking renovation and new construction projects required an extensive support team and multiple years to accomplish. 

This project utilized skills I already had, like sequential and long term planning, managing a team of people, and communicating with various stakeholders. While I was familiar with creating a plan as an instructor for how to complete a particular learning unit within a finite period of time, my new context required me to plan a realistic timeline where I was also a student within my team and required time for collaboration and successful product creation. Managing a group of my peers was different for me; while many of the principles are the same, I found that continuing to create clear expectations and being open to hard conversations continued to be necessary just as it had been with my students. One of the elements I was surprised I enjoyed so much was communicating with various stakeholders. I enjoyed hearing their perspectives on their daily tasks and was encouraged by the fact that I could do something to improve their experience and outcome as well as the entire team’s.