December 2, 2019

Do you really need that Service Now integration?

It’s been a couple of times now that I see bigger organizations ask for help in integrating their Service Now process with Azure DevOps. I even wrote a custom Deployment Gate some time ago using an Azure function before this functionality was fully available.

Now you can use the Service Now marketplace extension to gate a deployment until a Service Now change request is approved. Then how to do you dynamically associate something like a work item?

But should you even go down this path? Should you invest in this?

I don’t think so. It’s clear and shown by the State of DevOps report that formal change management processes requiring approval from an external Change Approval Boards (CAB) or a senior level employee negatively impact software delivery performance.

So why invest in something that ultimately won’t provide value?

Instead, spend time trying to reduce the lead time from commit to production without sacrificing on stability. Yes it’s possible. Elite/high performers have been doing it for a while.