Why does our CMDB look “complete” but still fail during incidents and changes?

[Matthew_13]

Hi Community,

On paper, our CMDB looks solid—CIs are populated, relationships exist, and data quality reports look acceptable.

However, during incidents and changes, teams still struggle to identify impact, ownership, or the right group to engage. It feels like we have data, but not usable context.
A few questions I’m hoping to learn from:

1. Which CMDB attributes or relationships have the biggest impact during real incidents?

2. How do you enforce CI ownership and lifecycle so the CMDB stays actionable?

3. At what point did your CMDB start delivering value beyond reporting and audits?

Interested to hear what made the biggest difference for others.

Post-fix /Answer Solution:

After digging into this, the issue wasn’t missing CIs—it was missing ownership, lifecycle enforcement, and usable relationships.

What made the biggest difference:

1. Enforcing owned by / managed by on every CI and tying it to assignment and escalation

2. Aligning CI lifecycle status with Incident and Change workflows (retired really means retired)

3. Focusing relationships on what responders actually need during impact analysis, not modeling everything

4. Governing updates through Change instead of allowing silent CI drift

Once the CMDB was treated as an operational tool instead of a reporting asset, incidents and changes became faster and far less guessy. The CMDB finally started delivering value inside ServiceNow, not just looking good on dashboards.

Thumbs up if find this article useful. Thanks Kindly!

[Mohammed8 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew_13 ,

1) I will share my experience of where Field Service Management was core of project and each CI represented a physical device on a form that required a site visit. If ownership or location was wrong, work orders and field agents were delayed. Relationships between devices and locations helped teams quickly understand impact and who needed to act. 

2) We enforced assignment and location need to be tied CI data so it helps in work order and task assignment. In FSM scenarios, incomplete CI caused operational issues, which naturally pushed teams to maintain accuracy. This approach improved data quality over time.

3) For us the CMDB started delivering value when CIs and work orders were routed correctly without manual and field agents knew exactly where to go and what equipment to carry and tend to.

Thanks and Regards,

Mohammed Zakir

[Mohammed8 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew_13 ,

1) I will share my experience of where Field Service Management was core of project and each CI represented a physical device on a form that required a site visit. If ownership or location was wrong, work orders and field agents were delayed. Relationships between devices and locations helped teams quickly understand impact and who needed to act. 

2) We enforced assignment and location need to be tied CI data so it helps in work order and task assignment. In FSM scenarios, incomplete CI caused operational issues, which naturally pushed teams to maintain accuracy. This approach improved data quality over time.

3) For us the CMDB started delivering value when CIs and work orders were routed correctly without manual and field agents knew exactly where to go and what equipment to carry and tend to.

Thanks and Regards,

Mohammed Zakir

[JenniferA082772 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew_13 

This is a very common CMDB challenge. In many environments, the issue isn’t missing CIs - it’s that the data doesn’t translate into usable context during incidents and changes.

A few things that tend to make the biggest difference in practice:

• CI ownership that’s enforced, not optional: Fields like Owned by and Managed by need to be mandatory and tied directly to assignment and escalation. Without this, impact analysis stalls almost immediately.

• Lifecycle status aligned with workflows: When retired or decommissioned CIs still appear in Incident or Change flows, trust in the CMDB erodes quickly. Lifecycle states must actively influence what teams see and act upon.

• Relationships modeled for responders: Over-modeling looks good on paper, but slows teams down during incidents. The most valuable relationships are those that enable responders to understand the impact and blast radius quickly.

• Governance through Change: Allowing CI updates outside of Change leads to silent drift. Treating Change as the control point keeps the CMDB accurate and explainable.

The CMDB usually starts delivering value beyond reporting once it’s treated as an operational system rather than a reporting or audit artifact. That’s typically when incident response and change planning become faster and far less guess-based.

For transparency, my perspective is informed by working closely with ServiceNow CMDBs and dependency data, including my experience with Faddom. The patterns above tend to show up regardless of the specific tooling in place.