We’ve been building workflows in ServiceNow for years so what makes “agentic” workflows different?
The key difference is this:
👉 Traditional workflows follow predefined paths
👉 Agentic systems decide the path dynamically
In older models:
- You define every condition
- You design every branch
- You control every outcome
With agentic AI:
- The system evaluates the situation
- Chooses the right tools (flows, APIs, data)
- Executes multiple steps on its own
- Adjusts if something fails
This is where things get interesting.
For example:
Instead of routing an incident → assigning → waiting
An agent could:
- Diagnose the issue
- Check historical fixes
- Trigger remediation
- Update the ticket automatically
All without strict scripting for each step.
This doesn’t replace workflows, but it builds on top of them.
As developers, our role shifts from:
👉 Designing every step
to
👉 Designing the environment and guardrails
That’s a mindset change worth thinking about.
