In 2005, Carnegie Mellon University reported that large scale projects were three to five times more likely to fail than small ones due to complexity, and notably, because “no one really understands all the interacting parts”. Two decades on, and we’re still tackling the same problems in which manual management – of instances, software, hardware, and beyond – is impacting the ability of software development projects to succeed.
The language has changed in 20 years, but the problems haven’t. And, despite all the technology available, we still have software development pipelines contingent on manual processes. Today’s software project failures might not tank an entire enterprise, but as an industry, we need to move beyond how we did things 20 years ago, and manually managing instances or security is a death knell to any software development lifecycle.
Manual instance management demands significant time and effort from developers, leading to delayed delivery and inefficient operational processes. These inefficiencies then divert resources from high-priority projects, adding colour to the fact that 97% of organisations are experiencing difficulties demonstrating GenAI’s business value. This productivity drag then leads to time-crunched developers being increasingly prone to human error in manual administrative processes, impacting migrations of update sets and, more worryingly, increasing the habit of overlooking critical governance, security, and quality checks.
Low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms such as ServiceNow, Salesforce, and others have come a long way in connecting and automating multiple business workflows, but the reality is that many organisations using these platforms still aren’t up to scratch on the governance, compliance, and security of their delivery pipelines.
These operational disruptions and deficiencies can then impact end users, and a single governance oversight could result in audits, fines, and immense reputational damage. For industries that are regulated, this can have irredeemable consequences. The routine administrative nature of manual instance management can also stifle innovation and hinder developers from experimenting with new technologies and features that drive business growth.
The hidden costs of manual management
Ask the question ‘Who’s got permission to do what?’ across a large enterprise and you may get answers that vary widely, leading to confusion surrounding control and permissions across deployment flows and the software development lifecycle. The result of these varying permissions can see hours of work lost or duplicated, development timelines stagnated, and time to market hindered, and that’s before we consider the damaging impact that poor commitment to compliance can have both financially and reputationally.
Multi-Instance Management is emerging as a critical practice for organisations that leverage ServiceNow, and is a strong contender for companies who need to manage multiple instances with clear visibility and control. Failure to do so raises security and regulatory breach risks, and manual management of instances leads to increased errors, with this process growing quickly unsustainable as organisations scale their developments, and have greater security commitments to honour.
What is Multi-Instance Management?
Multi-Instance Management is a smart technology that unifies siloed instances, and employees, ensuring all relevant parties and assets can leverage the benefits of speed and safety. Think of it like moving from stick to automatic, where all the functionalities of the software vehicle are working as they should be, but with a level of ease that is unprecedented for enterprises tackling busy delivery pipelines.
Compliance isn’t optional, and as an organisation grows, so does its audit burden. If your instances are accessible by developers with a sprawling web of permissions, from deployment and troubleshooting needs, this can have a detrimental impact on a business. In today’s world, these risks are simply unnecessary to the software development lifecycle and can be mitigated with good Multi-Instance Management.
Multi-Instance Management offers a centralised, streamlined, and manageable way for tech leaders to manage their operations, and lends itself well to compliance headaches by unifying the siloed management and administrative processes and removing the risk of security breaches and operational slowdowns.
Using a real-time and holistic approach that allows streamlined decision-making and policy-based automations, Multi-Instance Management works by offering a live multi-instance view of the changes made within an organisation, all while maintaining conformity within governance needs. This, in turn, bolsters delivery, compliance, and security frameworks, with Multi-Instance Management enabling greater consistency across instances, which is critical in digital environments that are under constant pressure and threat – both from business demands and from nefarious outside actors.
Given the complexity of today’s enterprise organisations, Multi-Instance Management grows in line as frameworks, policies, regulations, and, most importantly, operations scale – seamlessly optimising siloed instances into a business transformation slipstream. Crucially, manual interventions and the risk of governance falling out of place are minimised, meaning enterprises can reinvest resources into growth initiatives. The Multi-Instance Management approach hinges on combining real-time visibility, governance, and automation without unnecessary manual intervention or high setup costs.
How enterprises can drive business transformation velocity
Given the complexity of today’s enterprise organisations, Multi-Instance Management grows in importance as frameworks, policies, regulations, and, most importantly, operations, scale – seamlessly transforming once oscillated processes into a velocity flow. Speed with safety is achieved, minimising risk, manual effort and administrative overhead while accelerating the delivery of business requirements and projects.
Enterprises adopting Multi-Instance Management aren’t surprised when an updated set has been moved without prior awareness or approval because these kinds of unauthorised changes don’t happen. Instead, every deployment is policy-based, ensuring the appropriate checks, scans and approvals occur for every migration.
Additionally, an immutable record is kept for every change across every instance, providing ready-made compliance reports and shortening the mean time to resolution when troubleshooting failures. Multi-Instance Management fundamentally transforms ServiceNow delivery operations from a cadence to a hyperflow.
- Scott Willson is the head of product at xtype, a software company specialising in multi-instance management solutions for ServiceNow platform teams.
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
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