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.