We’re a couple of months removed from the holiday season now, which is the perfect time to reflect and draw comparisons between the best Christmas movie of all time and a ServiceNow implementation project.

Running a ServiceNow implementation is like planning the perfect Christmas. Everyone starts with good intentions, agrees upon the goal, and builds a plan that looks great on paper, until reality hits.

Like the Griswold vision, it’s not about incompetence; it’s about optimism colliding with complexity.

It’s All Part of the Plan (Until it isn’t)

Early confidence is not the same as delivery readiness.

The vision is clear, the perfect family Christmas. The perfect project plan. The scope and timeline are set, and everyone assumes this one should be straight forward. After all, how different could it really be?

We have always wanted a big family Christmas. We have enough towels and blankets for everyone. We’ll put up lights, get a nice big full tree that definitely won’t dry up too early, and have a big family dinner. It’s just a few more people.

This is often how implementation projects begin. Optimism backed by assumptions that have yet to be tested.

The Lights Scene = Integrations

Integrations are where “simple” dies first if you’re not careful.

You’ve got a great process and a great architecture. All it takes is one misconfiguration. One undocumented legacy dependency, one forgotten light switch and everything downstream fails.

Like a fire hazard your assumptions sit quietly until someone to proves them wrong.

Cousin Eddie is Scope Creep

Not all problems are technical. Some arrive in a robe, empty the septic tank, and stay way too long.

Stakeholders and even your own project teams begin asking questions that start with “Can we also just add…” or “We forgot to mention…” and my favorite, “This shouldn’t take too long…”. This is Cousin Eddie knocking at your door! He traded his home for an RV and he’s moving in to your driveway.

He means well but he shows up unannounced and causes chaos.

The Bonus That Never Came (Stakeholder Expectations)

Assumptions are the most expensive risk you don’t write down.

Clark’s Christmas plan hinges on a bonus that was assumed. As soon as this assumption was proven wrong the whole holiday, while already in turmoil, completely fell apart. Clark should have confirmed that his non-nutritive cereal varnish was worthy of a cash bonus.

Assumptions are often unavoidable when building a quote or a timeline, but they need to be reviewed and qualified before work begins. Otherwise, you end up with a jelly of the month club membership when what you were planning was a swimming pool.

The Meltdown (aka Go-live Week)

This isn’t failure. It’s the part where everything that was “probably fine” decides to prove otherwise.

UAT feedback is landing late, production data behaves differently than example or development data, everyone is demanding answers and your project team is scrambling to keep it all together.

By the end, everything seems to be breaking at once. Tempers may flare in extreme situations, and people may say things they later regret.

This is the moment where planning, or lack of it, becomes impossible to hide.

Why “Keeping It Simple” Wins

Simple designs don’t prevent chaos; they survive it.

The movie ends when the goal becomes getting through it together, expectations are reset and the chaos stops escalating.

The goal isn’t to avoid assumptions. The goal is to qualify your assumptions and build only as complex as needed.

Successful ServiceNow implementations aren’t about avoiding chaos entirely, they’re about designing systems that can survive it. Just like Clark Griswold’s Christmas, the goal isn’t perfection. It’s resilience, adaptability, and knowing when to unplug the lights before the fire hazard turns into a fire emergency.

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