Why Platform Governance Is the Unsung Hero of Digital Transformation

When organizations hear the word governance, it often triggers thoughts of bureaucracy, roadblocks, and red tape. But in the context of ServiceNow and enterprise transformation, governance isn’t about slowing progress. Done right, it’s the discipline that keeps your platform aligned with business strategy, protects against technical debt, and ensures long-term scalability. 

As Certified Master Architects (CMAs) Matt Espley, Kenric Wong, and Nate Weldon discussed in an episode of The Blueprint, governance is really about enabling, not restricting value. 

“It’s not just putting policies, procedures, roles, and responsibilities in place to make things difficult,” said Matt Espley. “It’s about enabling the business or enabling improvement and expansion of the platform. And you can’t do that without governance. Governance is really tying together the strategic direction of your company and what you want out of the platform with what capabilities you have on the platform and the work that you’re doing.” 

Governance Beyond the Stigma 

One of the biggest challenges is overcoming the stigma that governance is just politics or a way to push agendas. As Kenric Wong put it, people fear governance “as a form of authoritative decision-making.” 

“[However], when we have that vision and we have that value outcomes laid out, the governance becomes one of those key aspects of guiding them towards that strategy” 

In other words, governance isn’t a gate, it’s a compass. 

The Three Layers of Governance 

ServiceNow’s approach to governance can be broken into three tiers: 

1. Strategic – Executive steering that ensures platform investments align to business objectives. 

1. Portfolio (or demand) – Intake and prioritization of requests to make sure what’s being asked for supports strategic goals. 

1. Technical (or tactical) – Architectural and operational decisions that determine how solutions are implemented and maintained. 

All three are critical. Without tactical governance, technical debt builds up. Without portfolio governance, the wrong things get prioritized. Without executive governance, investments risk becoming siloed or misaligned with the enterprise vision. 

Real-World Lessons 

The CMAs shared practical examples where governance — or lack thereof — made a major impact: 

• Upgrade missteps: Kenric described a client whose model broke after an upgrade because governance hadn’t ensured the right ownership and oversight of integrations. 

• Customization clashes: Matt highlighted an HR team struggling to leverage knowledge management after IT had heavily customized it without future alignment in mind. 

• Security compliance: Kenric recounted how governance stopped a seemingly simple customization request that would have violated security hardening and potentially canceled system authorization. 

These stories illustrate that governance isn’t theory, it’s the mechanism that prevents costly mistakes. 

Executive-Level Conversations 

Governance also opens the door to more strategic discussions with leadership. Nate Weldon explained why this layer is his favorite: 

“It’s where you can talk about where you’ve been, but more so where you want to go, and how can we leverage the platform and its capabilities. That’s where we can convince and educate that ServiceNow is not a ticketing tool, it’s an enterprise service management tool.” 

For executives, governance ensures platform investments are business-led, not IT-led. It reinforces that the “why” is just as important as the “what” and “how.” 

Building Discipline Into the Platform Journey 

The takeaway? Governance is not optional if you want a platform that scales with your business. It’s a practice — something you do consistently, at every level.