When Your ServiceNow Implementation Timeline Is Already Slipping: A Recovery Playbook
A programme director at a European insurance group called me on a Tuesday morning. Their ServiceNow ITSM rollout had been running for four months. The SOW said six months to production. Every weekly status report for the first three months had shown green. Then, in weeks fourteen and fifteen, three things happened in quick succession. The vendor's lead architect rolled off to another project. UAT started and immediately surfaced eighty-seven defects the vendor said were "expected." And the security team, brought in late, said the ACL model needed to be redesigned before go-live could be approved. The status report was still green when he opened it. He was calling because he already knew it was not. This is the conversation I have every few weeks now. Somebody halfway through a ServiceNow implementation timeline realises the plan they signed off in kickoff has quietly stopped being the plan they are on. The vendor has not raised a red flag. The steering committee has not asked hard questions. But the trajectory is wrong, and the person calling me can feel it in their bones before the numbers confirm it. This post is for them.
