Why You Need a Deployment Checklist

Streamlining ServiceNow Deployments with Deployment Checklists

When you develop functionalities for ServiceNow, you can be multi-tasking and dealing with all sorts of distractions. It can make it easy to forget to do a specific task when it is time for you to deploy the developed functionality to a ServiceNow testing or production environment.

As a ServiceNow developer, any small but essential step in your deployment, if missed, can cause issues. It is even more likely to happen if the release involves multiple update sets and requires data changes, as this often needs to be deployed in the target environments following a deployment sequence.

Ensure consistency and completeness

Something I found extremely useful is writing deployment checklists. It could be a simple OneNote page with bullet points describing the step and the sequencing order.

The format of this document is not as important. It could be in Word, Excel, OneNote, Notion, etc. I like to use OneNote, EverNote or Notion, but as I said, where you create it isn’t as important as long as it is available when you need it the most, during the deployment day.

The content, though, is the crucial part; clear steps, in sequential order describing the task we need to complete. If the steps are clearly defined, nothing is missed, and we follow it, we are automatically saving time, and at the same, we ensure we do things with consistency.

In a checklist, you can list the items you need to do, verify, check or validate. If another developer colleague is involved in the deployment, you can add this too.

I like to write deployment checklists as soon as I begin development, noting steps, script names that I need to run, any data that I know I need to put in place pre deploying the code, etc.

This way, you free your mind from remembering the steps that need to be completed and worrying about forgetting to do something.