This year, I led the transformation of our platform development team at UCF IT by implementing Agile Development 2.0 using ServiceNow’s Agile module. We moved from a mix of unstructured work requests (incidents, enhancements, catalog changes) to a centralized, story-driven development pipeline — allowing us to better plan, track, and deliver.

Key Objectives

• Standardize work intake using RITMs, enhancements, and incidents as triggers
• Convert all development requests into Stories under a Unified Backlog
• Implement Story Point estimation to support sprint planning and capacity forecasting
• Bring visibility to technical work that previously went unnoticed

What We Did

1. Created a Unified Backlog tied to epics across team goals (e.g., Deprovisioning, Scoped App Enhancements)
2. Mapped intake types to story templates using Flow Designer automation
3. Trained the team on writing meaningful acceptance criteria and estimating story points
4. Introduced regular backlog grooming and monthly sprint demos

Challenges and Culture Shift

One of the biggest hurdles was shifting the perception that story tracking was only for performance monitoring. I positioned it as a tool for team accountability, planning, and visibility — not micromanagement. It helped us prioritize strategically and align with leadership goals.

Impact

• Improved transparency across projects and support work
• Allowed us to demonstrate velocity and throughput to stakeholders
• Created a structure for new interns and hires to plug into immediately

Next Steps

• Automating intake conversion even further using Catalog Tasks + Flow Designer
• Expanding Agile board usage to adjacent teams
• Using reporting to surface long-term trends and bottlenecks

Overall, this shift to Agile 2.0 inside ServiceNow has laid the groundwork for disciplined yet flexible development — supporting everything from daily ops to large-scale digital transformation projects.