If your incident process looks clean in design workshops but messy in production, the gap is not your states, it is your context. This article breaks down how the ServiceNow incident workflow actually behaves at runtime, including SLAs, state changes, assignment churn, and closure discipline. You will see why CMDB and CSDM ownership decisions shape priority, routing, and reporting more than any workflow tweak, plus what to fix first so your incident data holds up under pressure.