The Bigger Picture: CSDM 5+

How do Incidents, Changes, Problems, Events, Requests, Cases, Assets, and Dialogues connect to ServiceNow's Common Service Data Model (CSDM 5)? The answer is CSDM 5+: a practical extension that shows the bigger picture, clarifies concepts, and provides implementation guardrails.

0. INTRODUCTION

CSDM 5 defines six domains:

These domains align closely with the IT4IT v3 Value Chain.

CSDM 5+ reframes this into five interconnected layers, making the structure easier to apply in practice:

Some organizations define their own content. Others import out-of-the-box definitions (e.g., from the TBM Council). Both approaches are valid—success depends on governance, maturity, and scale.

Versioning in CSDM 5+

1. FOUNDATION

The Foundation layer provides shared master data:

• Organizational structure: Companies, Business Units, Departments
• Geography: Locations, Regions, Countries, States/Provinces
• Standards: Currencies, Languages, Time Zones
• Processes: Business Processes, Value Chains
• People: Groups, Roles, Employees, Memberships

Foundation data is stable and not versioned.

2. CATALOGS

CSDM defines three core catalogs:

Additional ServiceNow catalogs include:

3. BASELINES

3.1 Products

Products are coarse-grained items with managed lifecycles (software, hardware, cloud).

• Governed by Digital Product Management.
• Not versioned as baselines; their instances are.
• Enable one or more business/technical capabilities.

Examples:

3.2 Components

Fine-grained parts of Products: modules, configurations, cloud resources, files, or properties.

• Belong to one Product.
• Always versioned (minor-level).
• Created and deployed through CDAAS / DevSecOps pipelines.

3.3 Services

Services are delivered by Providers and consumed by Consumers.

Service Offerings:

• Variants of Services with commitments (region, environment, SLA).
• Belong to one Service.
• Not versioned.

4. INSTANCES

4.1 Service Instances

Real-world deployments of Services.

• Example: Development, Test, and Production are separate instances.
• Example: company-prd.service-now.com supports multiple offerings (IT, HR).
• APIs, portals, and AI agents are also Service Instances.

4.2 Configuration Items (CIs)

Detectable deployed items: servers, VMs, PCs, cloud resources, IPs, files.

• Tracked across ~1,500 CMDB tables.
• Can be tagged (e.g., Environment=Production).

4.3 Software Instances

Detected installations stored outside CMDB.

• Millions of records: OS components, packages, agents.
• Some licensed, others bundled or free.
• Not all are Assets.

4.4 Assets

Items with monetary value or assignment to a consumer.

• Managed via Asset Management.
• SAM normalizes detected software instances to licensing rules.
• Cloud licenses (O365, JIRA, SAP, ServiceNow, etc.) are tracked here.

5. TASKS

Tasks capture activity on Instances. Regardless of whether executed by people, bots, or AI, records are essential for collaboration and traceability.

5.1 IT Task Records

5.2 Customer & HR Task Records

5.3 Other Governance

Note: In Agile/SAFe setups, Problem Management often becomes redundant. Defects and enhancements are logged directly as stories.

Linking Tasks to Artefacts

Tasks must always be tied back to artefacts for consistency:

Best practices:

• Separate offerings for production vs non-production.
• Use standard product definitions (COTS).
• Organization-specific variants → model them as offerings, not Products.
• Dependency maps should show upstream products/capabilities and downstream CI trees.

OUTLOOK

CSDM 5+ will continue to expand, adding artefacts from:

Together, these will complete the "bigger picture" of how ServiceNow artefacts interconnect.

Key Takeaway

CSDM 5+ makes the model practical:

• Foundation defines the context.
• Catalogs capture intent.
• Baselines define design.
• Instances represent reality.
• Tasks record what happens.

When connected, they provide the clarity needed to manage IT consistently and at scale.