ServiceNow Exchange: Autonomous IT Academy - Change Models for Infrastructure Changes

Published on by Abigail Lavadia | Updated on

06.10.26 Autonomous IT Academy.jpg

Standardize Change Before You Automate It: Change Models for Infrastructure Changes

Most change management teams are running some version of the same problem: every infrastructure change follows a slightly different process depending on who submitted it, which team owns it, and what the approver remembered from last time. States get skipped. Maintenance windows get ignored. Templates exist but nobody uses them consistently. The result is a change process that looks standardized on paper but runs on tribal knowledge in practice.

That's the gap change models close.

This session covers Change Models within the Zero Service Outages journey (Insight phase). It's deliberately scoped to one thing: setting up change models for infrastructure changes. We're not trying to cover every change type in one session. Instead, we give you a prescriptive configuration walkthrough that you can replicate for other change models on your own. Getting the model right here is the foundational work that makes everything downstream possible, from risk scoring to auto-approval to schedule enforcement in the Automation and Autonomy phases.

Daniel Davidson kicks off with the problem framing and key concepts, covering how change models fit into Modern Change and why the configuration decisions you make now determine whether you can automate later. From there, Stefan Hosten walks through the practical configuration: defining states and state transitions, building change templates that enforce consistency, creating and maintaining schedules and maintenance windows, and working with decoupled components so you can set up schedules that apply to the model itself without needing to know the specific CI on every change.

The session includes a live demo showing how to configure an infrastructure change model end to end, from initial setup through schedule creation to the transitions that enforce your process. We close with KPIs organized across the Insight, Automation, and Autonomy maturity phases, and a call to action that includes the Modern Change Impact Accelerator for customers who want hands-on implementation support.

What you'll walk away with: A clear understanding of what change models are and why they're the Insight-phase foundation for automated change management, a step-by-step configuration walkthrough for infrastructure change models (states, transitions, templates, schedules, maintenance windows), a companion Change Models Adoption Guide you can download and follow immediately, KPIs to track your progress from Insight through Autonomy, and practical next steps including the Modern Change Impact Accelerator for IMPACT customers.

Presenters: Daniel Davidson (Director of Inbound Product Management) and Stefan Hosten (Principal Product Excellence Manager).

Keep going after this session:

Modern Change Impact Accelerator — For IMPACT customers ready for hands-on implementation support
Autonomous IT Journey Map + Context — See where Change Models fits in the bigger picture
The Autonomous IT Story — The strategic context behind the initiative
Browse the full Autonomous IT Academy — Every episode, companion guide, and registration link in one place (Community)

About ServiceNow® Exchange:

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