Building the Team
Behind the Platform

Christine Morris

Let's go ahead and get kicked off. Today we are here for what I think is our third installment of the Platform Owner MasterClass. Today's focus is really going to be around building the team behind the platform. We all know how important it is to have the right resources.

I am Christine Morris. I think we're all old friends at this point, but I am Vice President of Consulting for Ondaro.

I've brought some amazing co-hosts with me today. Ron, would you like to introduce yourself?

Ron Burt

I'm Ron Burt, Associate Director. As we've gone through some of these sessions, you've all been getting to be good friends with me. 27 years in a higher ed institution, worked on a variety of different teams — building teams, managing teams. So this will be a good session to walk through together. I've got about nine years on the ServiceNow platform managing different aspects of it.

Welcome everybody. I'll pass it over to Heather.

Heather Kelly

Hi everybody. Nice to meet you. I am the Associate Director of Global Talent and Organizational Development here at Ondaro. I've been in the ServiceNow ecosystem for almost ten years — somehow that snuck up on me. I really work on anything that helps people work better together — talent, performance, all sorts of things. And my specialty is helping to build teams, so that's why I'm here.

Christine Morris

Today we're going to cover a little bit about the evolution of the platform owner — what it used to be and what it is today. Ron's going to spend some time talking about building a team and the important factors there. And Heather's going to talk a little bit about career growth and how you can make folks feel enabled and wanting to stay with you. And then we're going to close it out with talking about whether to hire or use third parties.

A little bit about us — Ondaro is the only pure-play ServiceNow partner with fully certified resources across the platform, which is something we're very proud of. We've got expertise in all of the modules and areas you see there on the left.

Our work falls into three buckets. Envision — that's things like business transformation, organizational change management, AI readiness, strategy and governance. Implement and Develop — we have amazing architects and engineers, UI/UX designers, and we do custom app development. And then what we're really talking about today is Manage and Optimize — providing those steady-state services with our Propel offering, which we'll talk about a little bit more.

Just a little housekeeping. We want this to be interactive — we want you to engage with us. If you've got comments, questions, or things you want to share, throw those into the chat. If you need captions, click on More in Teams and you can turn those on. If you need help, just reach out.

This is our third installment of our MasterClass series. We've got our CMDB MasterClass with lots of great content there. My sidekick here will put those links in the chat, so we'd encourage you to take a look. We've also got about eight of our ITAM MasterClasses. If you're interested in any of those, jump in and check them out.

If you've been with us for a while, you know we love our surveys. A quick audience poll before we get kicked off — when hiring ServiceNow team members, what matters most to you? A: deep ServiceNow platform knowledge. B: strong stakeholder and business skills. C: prior experience owning or managing the platform. D: not sure, that's why I'm here. I'd love to see your responses in the chat.

Keith says A — yes, it's so important for them to understand the platform.

Another A from Thomas.

And I think some of this also depends on the role. If you're hiring a business analyst, having strong stakeholder and business skills is going to be really important. All right, let's dive in. Oh — we've got Tamara with A and B.

Some interesting facts we wanted to share. Fundamentally, the technology is the easy part — it's not really the constraint anymore. It's getting the people. These metrics explain why we all struggle, both in customer land and partner land, because there's a lot of demand. There's been a 55% surge in demand since 2024. 85% of Fortune 500 companies run on ServiceNow, so there's a huge ecosystem out there. Over 300,000 certified professionals globally.

But with that recent rise, a lot of those professionals have the technology knowledge but not necessarily real-life implementation experience. Hiring can take months to find the right resource. 51% of hiring managers struggle to find these resources. 30 to 40 days is the standard turnaround to find someone. And of course, while all this is going on, your backlog doesn't stop growing — it continues to get bigger and bigger. 90% of organizations face a digital skills shortage. This is a crisis — it's systemic, it's not just you. Only 30% of ServiceNow's value is what the average customer actually realizes, and not having the right resources is a big part of that. 70% of the value goes unrealized, and people are the biggest part of that gap.

And quite often, if you've spent time in previous sessions, we talked about having one or two admins. Fundamentally, you're one resignation away from a crisis. These are just some of the reasons why this is so painful for all of us.

Let's dive into the evolution of the platform owner.

Having been in this since way back in 2011, I've been through the whole evolution. If we think about what it looked like circa 2011, typically it was a process owner or the service desk who was the platform owner.

You were very much focused on processes and ticket management. You were responsible for a handful of product areas and managed a small but focused backlog. And of course, way back then you also built whatever you wanted on the platform and just acquired more and more technical debt.

Today things look a little different. You're no longer just responsible for incident, change, problem, and request. You're now responsible for a multitude of products — it could be customer-facing products. The platform has grown exponentially. You're responsible for platform strategy, governance, the roadmap, funding, and talent. Your success is measured by your team's capabilities, not necessarily your individual output. The platform owner has really become a force multiplier for the entire organization. The platform can now drive outcomes across the entire business. And if you've been at this since the 2011 days, you're also now focused on reducing technical debt — because back then, ServiceNow said build whatever you want, and many of us are now in a situation where we can't even take advantage of the new features they roll out.

Let's talk about a day in the life of a platform owner. These things on the left will likely resonate with you — you have to meet with stakeholders, constantly understand and manage multiple competing priorities. Everyone's knocking on the door wanting things now. You have to align platform investments to what's going to get the best business outcomes for your organization.

Demand management — you're getting enhancement requests and requests to stand up new modules. You fundamentally have to prioritize your backlog and balance enhancements because there's still day-to-day operational administration to handle. Delivery oversight — supporting delivery teams. For many of our larger enterprise clients, there's often shared services, so you may only get a portion of one resource's time and you're competing with other applications and systems.

Platform health — monitoring performance, working incidents, managing access, focusing on upgrades, and reducing technical debt. From a governance perspective, you've got to establish standards, deal with architecture review boards, manage security and compliance, and focus on data quality.

And with all of this, you're also communicating with your executive team — what's coming next, how we're adopting the platform, what's the value realization. You're responsible for your budget and all strategic initiatives. It's a pretty busy day for platform owners, and now with all of that, it's not just work orders, incidents, and requests anymore.

The role has become so much broader than platform administration. Strategy — you need a roadmap aligned to the business and their initiatives. You need funding. You're also responsible for your team — coaching, hiring, and developing talent. And in this market, where people are constantly moving from one job to another because there are so many ServiceNow jobs available, succession planning has become a critically important aspect of the role.

Operations, platform health, release planning, continuous improvement. And from a leadership perspective, you're still working to drive adoption and influence your executives. What we've come to see is that the modern platform owner spends a lot less time with their hands on the keyboard working in the platform, and more time enabling people, defining governance standards, managing business outcomes, and managing a backlog that's often unmanageable.

This comes down to questions every platform owner should be asking. If my lead developer resigned tomorrow, what happens? What are my single points of failure? Is all the knowledge with one person — and if they leave, I'm stuck with no ability to administer or improve the platform?

Who might be ready to step into a leadership role? If you as the platform owner move up and take on a new leadership position, how are you going to handle that transition?

And another one — is our platform knowledge documented, or does it live in someone's head? This is an area where quite often the answer is: someone's head. Which goes right back to — if your lead developer resigned tomorrow, what are you going to do?

And of course I couldn't help myself — I had to add a lovely meme. Raise your hand if you've ever been personally victimized by ServiceNow. We love ServiceNow, but it's not always the easiest thing to maneuver, and it can be a real challenge.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Ron to talk about building a team.

Ron Burt

Thank you, Christine. We're going to do another poll. Those will be posted in the chat. How is your platform team structured today? A: there's one dedicated central team that supports all business units. B: there's a mix of internal, partner, and contractor support. C: there is no structure — it's every team for themselves, like the Hunger Games. And D: we have one person doing it all and they are stressed.

Christine Morris

I wonder how many D's we will have.

Ron Burt

Yeah, lots of D's.

Christine Morris

B's are great too.

Ron Burt

Yeah.

Christine Morris

And B is really the approach I took when I was a platform owner, because you're going to have highs and lows from a capacity perspective.

Ron Burt

Does this resonate with you — this visual of why platform teams struggle? As Christine was talking about, if you have that growing backlog and limited capability, one person with all the knowledge in their head, high team turnover, limited cross-training, no succession planning, no career progression —

some of that leads to burnout. There's limited budget for top talent, and people burn out from reactive work as opposed to being fed and kept moving forward. And sometimes there are those reactive hiring cycles you need to address. Let's go to the next slide and talk about how to build platform talent.

One of the biggest misconceptions around building a platform team is that it usually starts when somebody resigns. Unfortunately, that's a little too late — a lot of times we're talking about institutional knowledge, and that walks out the door when someone leaves. Let's look at a couple of pitfalls and some tips on how to address them.

That way you can start to build a team that's not just supporting the backlog you have right now, but future-proofing and building the team you're going to need one to three years down the road. One pitfall is that AI has flooded the job market, making it hard to identify truly qualified candidates.

There's a lot of experienced ServiceNow talent out there and it's incredibly competitive. AI has also changed recruiting because it's easier for candidates to generate a polished resume and application. But finding people with true, real implementation experience requires more than that — it requires a much more intentional interview process to really dive beneath the surface.

And it's not just about how something sounds — it's not Claude 2.0. It's also the interviewing itself.

Christine Morris

I'd add to that. It isn't even just the resume. One of the things we've seen when trying to hire architects and process consultants is that folks are putting ChatGPT on their phone and giving the most perfectly worded answers — and it sounds like they know everything. We've gotten to a point where we literally have to watch their eyes. Are they clearly reading something? We can end up in a situation where someone seems like the best resource on earth, you hire them, and then they don't even have the skills they appeared to have — they sadly cheated their way through using AI. That's a big challenge.

Ron Burt

It's an ever-changing world. Top talent is usually already employed — they're not out there actively looking and applying. Another key piece of this is building relationships. So much is about the relationships and the network you have. Even before you're actively looking, attend user groups, SNUGs, and different networking events to build those relationships. That network can help you identify candidates when the time comes.

Partner salaries often outpace internal compensation, so be realistic. But there are things beyond salary — career growth, purpose, and ownership. Make sure you can offer those other things and not just focus on salary.

Certifications don't equal experience. Hire for learning agility — people are going to have to learn new things, it's just the nature of the beast. They're going to have to understand different areas of the application, be agile, and be able to shift and problem-solve. Look for those qualities and invest in their development.

And again, I want to close this out the same way I opened — don't wait until someone is about to resign before you start thinking about how to replace them.

Always be building your bench through mentoring, internships, and succession planning. We were fortunate at the university to have a great pool of willing students we could bring in. That created higher turnover, but it forced us to have easy onboarding processes and documentation in place — a true plug-and-play model.

Take that institutional knowledge and get it into playbooks and documented processes so that succession planning becomes easier for everyone who comes in.

That also drives the second point — don't allow one expert to own all the knowledge. Cross-train your people. Pair a senior with a junior. If someone wants to expand into other areas of the application, let them. Have them learn other areas, because that's only going to help. If you're just focused on the ITSM side but someone wants to reach into CSM, let them — cross-training across areas of the platform is really important.

If you want to be a successful platform owner, you're going to have to think a little differently. Build the roles, not the heroes. Don't depend on that one individual ServiceNow guru. It's great to have those people, but you want to build systems that allow everybody to contribute. Successful platform owners don't just recruit — they build talent.

Create internship opportunities. Get clear, defined ownership so roles and responsibilities are well-defined and not overlapping. Have clear lines of accountability while also allowing folks to branch into other areas through cross-training.

Set up a cross-training program — pair seniors with juniors, document critical processes, and have regular knowledge-sharing sessions. We used to do brown-bag lunches where people would talk about a certain area or aspect of what they're working on — like mini TED Talks that let people see what others are doing.

Share knowledge intentionally and reduce single points of failure. Don't measure your bench strength by headcount alone. If you have five people and one of them leaves and everything fails, that's not a strong bench. It's far more resilient when knowledge is distributed across multiple people — when you have rotation of ownership across teams, playbooks for processes, and your bench strength is truly deep. Build roles, not heroes. Don't put all your eggs in one basket — distribute that knowledge across the team.

With that, I'll hand it over to Heather to talk about career growth.

Heather Kelly

Thanks, Ron. Back to a poll — we'd love to hear from you. What's the biggest barrier to your career growth right now? A: not enough time to learn and train. B: unclear path for advancement. C: lack of mentorship or guidance. D: budget for certifications and training.

Keith says A — not enough time. D and C from Tony. All of these are things we run into all the time in a busy workplace.

Let me share some career paths we've identified for growing a platform team. Growth opportunities are one of the best retention levers we've got — often more powerful than compensation alone.

This slide shows the tracks we've built for our people. We've got the Technical Track and the Functional and Leadership Track. Starting out as a developer, showing career growth to senior, then to architect, and finally up to principal or lead. This is for people who want to go really deep on the platform, build their technical expertise, and grow in ownership as they progress up that chain.

On the right, we've got the Functional and Leadership path — from platform admin to business process consultant, up to platform owner, and then on to advanced leadership. This path is for those who want to grow through business context, stakeholder relationships, and eventually lead outcomes for the entire organization.

The key point here is that neither track is better or worse — they're just showing and demonstrating all of the options available to people on the platform team. There are plenty of ways to advance, and growth opportunities are your best option for retention — often more powerful than compensation alone.

People stay because they are trusted, recognized, and given career growth opportunities — and because they feel that what they're doing matters.

Think about the best managers you've ever had. You probably don't initially think about the salary they gave you — it's probably about the way they made work feel. Did they give you meaningful work? Did you feel like you had an impact on the platform? Were you aligned to the mission? Were you able to grow? Could you say, I'm getting better?

Did you have learning opportunities? Were you able to gain certifications? Stretch assignments can also make people feel like they're advancing their skills. The autonomy to feel trusted — to own your domain, make your own decisions, and be flexible in how things get delivered.

And finally, being celebrated for your work — getting acknowledged by your peers and being visible to leadership. All of this goes way beyond retention through salary alone. If you can implement any part of these items, people will be much less likely to take that call from a recruiter.

Christine, I'll pass it back to you.

Christine Morris

Thanks, Heather.

It sounds like we had quite a few folks who are already using a mix of internal versus third-party management. Before we dive in, let's do one more survey. Who currently owns and manages the platform? A: a dedicated platform team. B: the IT team, even if they don't have the training or experience. C: a mix of different teams with varying levels of experience — that shared services model. D: a partner or third party.

Lots of dedicated platform teams. Thomas is going all in with a partner — love it. Keith is doing a bit of both.

And I think it depends on your roadmap and what you're trying to accomplish. We'll dive into that a little deeper.

Let's talk about when the best use of your internal team is versus when you bring in a partner. Internal teams really excel at understanding your business — they know what goes on, they live and breathe it every day. They've been on the platform with you for hopefully years, so they understand what a day in their life looks like. They handle the daily management of tickets, requests, and enhancements. They have relationships with your key stakeholders. They understand your governance and prioritization model. They know what it takes to implement successful change for your organization. They know the platform's pitfalls and problems well enough to really focus on continuous improvement — and of course, they're building internal capability.

Partners really excel at things like specialized expertise. If you've been on ITSM and ITAM and now you're going to roll out IRM, that's a different animal. You want to make sure you've got people who have done it before and have that knowledge.

Timing is a big element — as we've heard in all of these sessions, the backlog is a constant struggle. If a new business unit comes in and they need something in three months, that can be a real challenge. Using a partner can really accelerate that. Surge capacity, architecture guidance — making those best decisions as you're bringing more and more onto the platform. Industry best practices — as a partner, we work with many organizations just like yours, so we can say, "this worked really well for them" or "don't do that, it didn't work so well." And of course, filling those temporary staffing gaps. So there's definitely a model for both.

How do you find the right partner? For the record, I happen to believe Ondaro is the right partner — but it might not be the right partner for everyone, so we thought we'd share some additional information.

There is the Partner Finder on ServiceNow's website. You can actually go in and look at the various partners and even compare one partner to another.

Things to look for include PLA certification — ServiceNow has very rigorous processes for Product Line Achievements, and partners have to go through a specific set of criteria. If you're going to bring in a partner, you want one that has those validated practices to make sure you've got truly certified resources.

The PLA means ServiceNow actually sits down with us and conducts an interview. It's not just about the technology — it's about governance, stakeholder management, and outcomes. To earn that PLA, you have to hit a lot of high marks. And then references — which goes back to Ron's comment about going to SNUGs and networking events. Go to Knowledge. Start building that network so that when you do need someone, you've already established those relationships.

This is just a quick look at what that Partner Finder looks like. You can see there are different buckets — service providers, consulting and implementation. If you just need hands on keyboard from a build perspective, that will give you a lot of helpful information to understand those partner types before you start filtering.

The tiers matter — Elite and Premier are going to have much more experience than someone at a lower certification level. Look at the various product areas. When you go to the Partner Finder, you can actually see ITSM, ITSM Pro, and ITOM — so you want to make sure they've got the appropriate skills and certifications in those areas.

The Partner Finder is just the start, not necessarily the finish. Building yourself a shortlist and comparing is what's going to get you the right partner.

So we've covered a lot. Any questions? Is this resonating? Was it helpful? Did you love it? Are you speechless?

Stacy says very helpful — thank you, Stacy. It's a constant struggle, and one of the things I've found is that it's nice to know you're not alone. Everyone else is struggling too — we're all in it together.

A few things — if you are looking to bring in a partner, we'd of course love that partner to be us. We've got our Propel offering where we can bring all sorts of expertise — it's not just one area, it's having access to all of our resources across all of the products on the platform.

If you still don't have a roadmap, we'd love to help you with that. And one of the big things we're focusing on these days is AI governance. Just like every other technology, there are governance aspects and security aspects to get right. We do a lot of work around starting with AI in the right way — standing it up so you can quickly see and measure that value. If you're interested in any of these, just reach out.

And just to call out — for those of you who've been with us since the first session, we share a recommended team structure with helpful details that will be provided in a guide — how to staff and what that structure should look like. We wanted to reiterate and share that for those of you who maybe weren't in the first session. And that is it.

If you've got any questions or would like to dive further into any of this, our email is right there — we'd love for you to reach out. And since we have a little bit of time, I'd like to poll our audience. We've covered best practices, team structure, and governance. What would you guys like to see next? And yes, Thomas, we will share the presentation.

Are there any topics burning on your brain that you want to know more about? Any particular area of the platform? Upgrades?

All right, Thomas says AI — great, yes, we could definitely do that. It's burning on everyone's brain. Well, we thank you all for joining. We love these sessions, we love this engagement. And coming soon — another installment. Thanks, everyone.

Heather Kelly

Thanks, everyone.

Ron Burt

See you at the next one.