Technical debt in ServiceNow builds gradually. It often starts with a customization, a new workflow, or an implementation that replicates legacy processes without considering what is available out of the box.  Individually these decisions may seem reasonable. Over time, they accumulate and begin to shape how the platform can be changed, upgraded, and governed.

Changes to out-of-the-box functionality and increasingly complex configurations can both introduce risk.  Highly customized, or highly configured can equally have negative impacts.

With any environment that has existed for an extended period there is a possibility of accumulated dependencies which can impact how the platform operates, its upgradability to adopt new features, and how much effort is required from the platform team to maintain or change.  Many customers who have wanted to take advantage of the AI-powered workflow features are not able to.

It’s important for platform and product owners to examine their ServiceNow implementation periodically, especially prior to significant transformation, through a ServiceNow technical debt assessment focused on platform health, stability, and ability to absorb new changes

The following five questions are meant as a helpful starting point to understand if technical debt exists, suggest where it might exist, and begin the effort of prioritizing what the highest risk to the platform is.

Are Upgrades Difficult to Perform?

When a platform has technical debt, upgrades become more challenging.  The upgrade process and associated testing become more time consuming, slowing the pace of change and increasing the effort required to adopt new capabilities.  Customizations may break and end-users may not be able to take advantage of new features because their process has strayed too far from ServiceNow’s baseline.

This question should be considered both at a platform level and at a product level.  Platform upgrades introduce new capabilities, features, and so on, at a platform level.  Product upgrades will impact workflow, screens, and introduce the new capabilities to the product which the platform upgrade enabled.

Take note of where upgrades are most arduous to perform, from platform to products.  It can suggest where customization is highest and where the work needs to focus.

Are There Areas of the Platform Where Change is Impossible?

When a team hesitates to change a workflow, update a process, or any other sort of change, that may be an indicator of too much technical debt.  When platforms are highly complex, they are less intuitive to update, and often documentation does not exist to provide sufficient guidance.

If there is an area, or multiple areas of the environment where teams consistently avoid making changes or when they do, it breaks, it is an area that warrants scrutiny.

Can Anyone Identify Your Customizations?

When it’s easier to implement the requested change than it is to document it, often documentation falls behind.  However, understanding where ServiceNow has been customized is critical to support upgrades, future changes, and overall maintenance.

If the level of customization makes it difficult to clearly identify what has been changed, the environment is likely carrying significant technical debt.

Can Anyone Explain Why Your Technical Debt Exists?

While technical debt certainly poses challenges to organizations, not all technical debt carries the same impact or business value.

If technical debt exists, is it possible to distinguish between what is a critical to the business versus what is an unnecessary burden?  If your technical debt needs to decrease, this will help greatly with prioritization and help identify easier areas to lower the technical debt while simultaneously suggesting which parts of technical debt are worth defending.

If Key Individuals Left, Would Institutional Knowledge Leave with Them?

If an environment is highly configured or customized and therefore has a lot of technical debt, often that knowledge is not documented, but depends on a key set of individuals who have spent so long supporting it, they understand it in depth.  However, training someone else to the same level is frequently time consuming because of the history behind the changes, and nuances with how it was implemented.  When this happens, informal expertise becomes an operational dependency.

In fact, the key individuals may be identified through asking the previous questions; they are the ones who speak up the most and have the most context.

When parts of your platform can only be supported by specific individuals versus being easily picked up by their similarly trained and capable peers, then this is in indicator of technical debt.

Technical Debt is Keeping Companies from Getting the Most They Can Out of ServiceNow

When technical debt is high, so is the effort to maintain, govern, and evolve the platform.  It is difficult and time consuming to upgrade, and when upgrades occur, it’s not always possible to take advantage of new capabilities due to legacy changes.  Platform and implementation teams struggle to enumerate where their customization exists and cannot articulate why certain parts of the platform are highly configured or customized. It is not possible to take advantage of the new autonomous and agentic capabilities which ServiceNow has introduced.  Over time, it reduces confidence in platform decisions, erodes the strategic benefit that ServiceNow can provide, and slows the organization’s ability to evolve.

If any of these questions raised concerns about the amount of technical debt, the next step is to clarify where it has accumulated and where it introduces risk.  A ServiceNow Technical Debt Assessment can go several steps further, providing insight into where the technical dependencies lie, undocumented customizations, and areas of your platform which do not align with ServiceNow Best Practices.

This is the first step in unchaining your platform from its historical technical debt, simplifying maintenance, improving the upgrade experience, and allowing you to take advantage of ServiceNow capabilities as they come out.

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