Governance Frameworks for ServiceNow Platform Sprawl in Large Enterprises

Abstract

As ServiceNow adoption deepens within large enterprises, platform sprawl — characterized by uncontrolled customization, scope creep, orphaned configurations, and upgrade resistance — has emerged as a critical operational risk. This paper analyzes the root causes and consequences of ServiceNow platform sprawl and proposes a multi-layered governance framework to manage technical debt, enforce architectural standards, and maintain upgrade readiness. The framework integrates ITIL 4 governance principles, ServiceNow's Delegated Development model, and CMDB health management into a cohesive operating model, and is illustrated through worked governance scenarios drawn from common enterprise patterns. Prior literature on low-code technical debt, federated development governance, and CMDB accuracy suggests that the governance practices this framework operationalizes — architecture review gates, orphaned-artifact ownership, and pre-release upgrade impact assessment — are the practices most plausibly associated with reduced upgrade regression and customization-related defects, though this relationship has not yet been tested against a completed empirical sample and is proposed here as the paper's validation agenda rather than a reported result. The proposed Governance Maturity Model provides a roadmap for platform owners and enterprise architects. This study makes three distinct contributions. To theory, it extends low-code governance literature by operationalizing platform sprawl as a measurable construct (the proposed Platform Sprawl Index) and framing its expected relationship with governance maturity as a testable hypothesis grounded in prior low-code technical debt and CMDB governance research. To practice, it provides ServiceNow platform owners and enterprise architects with a five-level Governance Maturity Model and a set of five governance practices, derived from the literature and illustrated through worked scenarios, that are proposed — not yet demonstrated — to reduce upgrade regression incidents and customization-related defects. To policy, it offers enterprise IT governance leaders a framework for formalizing Delegated Development contracts and artifact lifecycle policies within existing ITIL 4 and COBIT governance structures, enabling organizations to scale ServiceNow adoption without proportional growth in technical debt.