ServiceNow ITSM Interview Questions 2025


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What are the different types of change in ServiceNow, explain each?

There are three types of changes :

1. Standard Change: A standard change is a pre-authorized change that is low risk, relatively common and follows a specified procedure or work instruction.

2. Normal Change: This type of change follows the complete change lifecycle. It needs two-level approvals and must be planned well ahead of time. It usually has a major impact on the business process and overall IT workflows.

3. Emergenency Change: A change that must be implemented as soon as possible, for example to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch. This change is of such a high priority that it bypasses group and peer review and approval and goes straight to the Authorization state for approval by the CAB approval group.

Explain change management life cycle?

ServiceNow largely complies with the core aspects of ITIL for its change management process. ServiceNow follows below lifecycle in change management.

1. New: A need for a change is identified and a change request is initiated.

2. Assess: The created change is then extensively assessed by a person of authority who governs the change process and a decision is taken whether to accept or reject the requested change.

3. Authorize: Once the change is deemed as necessary, its impacts, benefits and risks are reviewed to avoid any unnecessary disruption of IT setup. It is evaluated by the leadership and all stakeholders, who will be impacted by the change and then it is given an approval. For high-priority changes, which might impact the overall business operations, the Change Advisory Board (CAB) is also consulted.

4. Schedule: The initiated change is scheduled for implementation in such a way that no work disruption occurs.

5. Implement: With the approvals and schedule in place, the necessary changes are implemented in the IT system.

6. Review: The implemented change is tested and verified to ensure it is working in the intended manner and if any component of the whole change ecosystem is broken.

7. Close: When a change is closed, all related and associated incidents/ problems are closed automatically.

8. Cancel: There is an additional option to cancel any change requests that are initiated. The reason for cancelling the change is added to the Work Notes field.

What is difference between change and request, when we are supposed to raise change vs request?

Requests typically have the following characteristics:

- Approval is automatically granted by the delegated authority.
- The tasks are well known, documented, and proven.
- Authority is effectively given info in advance for the change.
- The request is included as part of the service offering.
- The risk is usually low and well understood.
e.g. Password reset, Account Creation etc.

Change Request have the following characteristics :
- A change request requires authorization by the Change Advisory Board (CAB).
- A change request might involve a significant change to the service or infrastructure.
- It might carry a high degree of risk.
e.g. Request to promote code from one environment to another.

What is CAB in change management?

Change advisary board in short known as CAB is group of people who assess, authorize, priorize the changes and control the process. The owner, manager, architects, project managers of the service or infrastructure should approve the changes with an agreement with business owners.

What is problem?

A problem is a cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents. Problems can be raised in response to a single significant incident or multiple similar incidents. They can even be raised without the existence of a corresponding incident.

Explain Problem Management life cycle?

The Problem Management process has many states, and each is vitally important to the success of the process and the quality of service delivered. The Problem life cycle can be represented in a diagram as follows:

Explain relation between change, incident and problem with example?

Let's say your VDI is working very slowly around 4 to 5PM, this will be considered as unplanned disruption of service therefore you will raise an incident. The corresponding team will look into the issue, and try to find out the root cause. Let's assume issue exist due to heavy traffic in Asia region server. So, as a work around they might ask you to connect to the EMEA server which might resolve your issue for the day.

Suppose many Asia region users are facing this issue daily and they start raising incidents, this multiple incident for the same issue will be considered as problem and problem record will be created to find paramanant solution. Once problem record is created, technical team will start investigating the issue as part of problem process.

Assume that they find out the root cause as Asia people also join in EMEA shift around 4-5 PM therefore load is suddnly getting increased on Server. So, they plan to increase the server capacity to handle more users. As increasing Server capcity is big unplanned significant change therefore it requires change request to be created to deploy these changes on required Server.


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User Added Interview Question and Answers

Gauri 2025-11-02 01:08:41

What is service offerings on incident form. OOB incident fields. What is OLA. What KPI you can think to be kept on mind while implementing Incident module. Before starting of implementing a incident module for a client what questions you ask. What can be implemented in incident module as part of predictive intelligence What all integrations have you done with ITSM modules , why was it required Which change does not require approval Steps follow to perform RCA Before closing change what is steps followed for PIR If the knowledge article is not visible to one user what can be the case

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Angie 2024-12-24 13:24:08

How knowledge record can be created from an Incident or a Problem record?


Sanjokta 2025-08-06 02:14:06
In ServiceNow, we can create a Knowledge article directly from an Incident or Problem by clicking on the 'Create Knowledge' related link on the record. It auto-fills the details like short description and resolution. We can then edit it, choose the Knowledge Base and category, and submit it for publishing."
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Hans Raj 2025-08-08 00:42:07
You can create a knowledge article from an Incident or Problem using the "Create Knowledge" UI action. It copies relevant details like short description and resolution notes into a new article. We can also automate this via Workflow or Flow Designer for bulk or conditional creation. There are other ways to do it as well: 1) Use the "Create Knowledge" UI Action (On the Incident or Problem form (after it’s resolved or closed), you'll typically see a button or related link called "Create Knowledge") 2) Manually Create a Knowledge Article 3) Via Workflow or Flow Designer 4) Scripted Creation via Business Rule or Script Action (use BR to automatically create knowledge article when Incident/Problem meets certain conditions
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Vamsi Krishna 2025-11-20 23:01:11
If the customer has Now Assist installed, then using Generative AI capabilities, the fulfiller can easily create a knowledge article by clicking on the Create Knowledge UI action. Then, Now LLM will automatically populate the Knowledge Article form based on the short description, description, resolution notes, activities, etc. Later, the fulfiller/knowledge manager can review and publish it to the KB base.
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Speedy 2024-12-24 13:22:32

What is a change model and how is it different from Change Interceptor?


Nacro 2025-01-28 00:06:58
An Interceptor is a wizard-like layer before creating a record in all cases when it is not clear which type of record should be created. for example, when we click on 'Create New' module under the Change application, we are greeted by a page which consists of different options like Emergency Change, Standard Change, various standarad chnage templates and so on.... This page/interface is known as the Interceptor. Example with screenshot https://www.servicenow.com/community/virtual-agent-forum/what-is-interceptor-in-servicenow/m-p/2782856
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Nacro 2025-04-06 06:02:25
Change Model consits of the the allowed state transitions and the state transition conditions, that will be followed by the Change Record in it's lifecycle. By default the change uses 'ITIL Mode 1', but if an organization wants their change request follow a modified lifecycle they will need to create a custom change model and base their Flow off the newly created model. Read up more here https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/yokohama-it-service-management/page/product/change-management/concept/change-models.html OR https://www.servicenow.com/community/itsm-forum/change-types-vs-change-models/m-p/2642973
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Sreedhar 2024-10-07 01:56:39

What is the Authorize state in the change about?


Heisenberg 2024-12-24 13:20:20
This is the final approval stage where the change is already reviewed and approved by the project team and now it will be evaluated by CAB (Change Advisory Board) Team to decide whether the requested change is ready for deployment or not. If approved, change will be in queue for the deployment stage. If rejected, then the requestor needs to review the change and it will undergo all approvals based on selection of change type/ change model.
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venkatesh 2024-07-10 20:13:42

Can you explain the incident implementation Step by step and challenges you faced while implementing

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Dhanalakshmi 2024-07-02 10:11:20

How to create multiple(ex: 5-6)tasks Or records using one record producer catalog one after the another.


Heisenberg 2024-12-24 13:21:28
Using flow designer or workflow.
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Krishna 2024-06-04 21:05:45

i had a question asked what are the ITSM Implementation steps in step by step not theoretical but in practical steps how do you implement ITSM?


Sri vani 2024-06-12 02:33:57
Assessment and Planning: Understand current processes, identify gaps, and define goals. Create a roadmap detailing the implementation process, including roles, responsibilities, and timelines. Tool Selection and Configuration: Choose an ITSM tool aligned with your organization's needs. Customize and configure the tool to support defined processes and workflows. Process Definition and Documentation: Document ITSM processes based on industry best practices like ITIL. Ensure clarity on roles, procedures, and communication channels. Training and Communication: Provide comprehensive training to staff on new processes and tools. Communicate changes effectively across the organization to gain buy-in and support. Continuous Improvement: Establish metrics and KPIs to measure process efficiency and service quality. Continuously review and refine processes based on feedback and data analysis to drive ongoing improvement.
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Keerthana Arumugam 2024-05-21 07:40:37

What is lead time in change management


Bhavesh 2024-08-30 18:14:39
Lead time is basically a total time period of change management i.e. the total time required to complete change request from its initiation to its implementation.
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Sharad 2024-04-08 00:55:40

What are the priority tickets and how the tickets are classified as p1,p2,p3,p4 and their response time and resolution time sla?


Shrihari 2024-05-05 21:10:31
Tickets are prioritized based on the Impact and Urgency of the tickets. Impact is calculated based on the number of users, operational, financial and regulatory impacts on the business. Where as Urgency is calculated by from the business requirements of the service that is interrupted. The tickets response time and resolution time will be a part of the SLA that is agreed.
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Ayush Gurjar 2024-07-11 12:35:43
Each level has a different Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response and resolution times. P1 (Critical) 1 hour to respond P2 (High) 4 hours to respond P3 (Normal) 8 hours to respond P4 (Low) 5 days to respond
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Varad Bhagwat 2023-09-17 01:02:13

What is Blackout and Maintenance window in change management?


Kapil Don 2023-09-26 05:10:08
Blackout windows specify times during which normal change activity should not be scheduled. Maintenance windows specify times during which change requests should be scheduled.
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vishnu 2023-09-11 04:16:32

scenario: for eg your client is asked to implement approval for standard change.. then how can you achieve this.


Praveen 2023-09-22 22:16:23
You can achieve this by modifying the OOB change workflow
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Priyanka 2023-08-11 02:43:57

What is affected CI?


Kishan 2023-08-26 13:04:39
Affected CI's are the CI's which are affected by associated change. This CI's are later considered to populate Impacted CI's or services. More Details Here : https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/sandiego-it-service-management/page/product/change-management/concept/c_AffectedCIsAndImpactedServices.html
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Mahi 2023-07-04 20:11:16

How do you create a new type of change?


Praveen K 2023-09-22 22:19:06
Check this documentation link - https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/vancouver-it-service-management/page/product/change-management/task/create-a-change-model.html
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Comments

Aginesh 2024-07-13 00:03:50
Thanks to everyone who support this forum I appreciate their effort and time really grateful thank you!



Pooja 2023-04-20 23:38:31
I was having confusion to understand relation between Problem, Change and Incident, your provided explanation and example is so easy to understand. Thank you for such a useful content.