Technical Debt in ServiceNow: What Actually Hurts Long Term

[Abhijeet Upadh2]

Technical debt in ServiceNow is rarely dramatic. It doesn’t usually come from one bad decision; it comes from hundreds of reasonable ones made under pressure. What hurts long term isn’t that debt exists—it’s where it accumulates.

The most damaging debt I’ve seen lives in shared layers: script includes, business rules on core tables, global utilities that “everyone uses.” These pieces quietly become load-bearing structures without anyone formally owning them. Years later, teams are afraid to touch them because they don’t know who or what might break.

Another form of debt that rarely gets discussed is conceptual debt. When data models, state models, or role models don’t align with how the business actually works, teams compensate with exceptions. Over time, exceptions become the norm, and the platform starts to feel inconsistent and unpredictable.

Community discussions often frame technical debt as “too much customisation.” In reality, some of the worst debt I’ve encountered was fully OOB—but misapplied, misunderstood, or stretched beyond its intent.

The most successful teams don’t aim for zero debt. They aim for visible, managed debt. They document why shortcuts were taken, revisit them deliberately, and refactor opportunistically. Technical debt becomes dangerous only when it’s invisible and unowned.

As architects, our responsibility isn’t to eliminate debt—it’s to ensure the platform never forgets where it exists.