The Hidden Iceberg: Tackling unseen IT workflows with agentic automation

Workflows are the lifeblood of every organization. From handling IT ticket prioritization to approval workflows to access provisioning, well-functioning workflows ensure that systems run smoothly, employees stay productive, and businesses meet their goals.

But we’ve only implemented the tip of the iceberg when it comes to workflows. With icebergs, all you see is the 10% on the service and not the 90% that lies under the surface. Similarly, all that can be automated by traditional workflow tools is the 10% on the surface. Think back to your own workday and think of the number of workflows you wish you could automate but that you can’t automate. It might even be because of where it falls on this handy xkcd chart.

There are two issues when it comes to setting up automations for the flow of work:

1. Either the amount of effort that goes into setting up the automation doesn’t justify the automation or
2. The tech is not equipped to handle the hidden iceberg (TM pending) of this particular automation. The deeper they go, the more they encounter unstructured, unpredictable, and uniquely human tasks.

Consider an incident workflow. A routine ticket about slow system performance is escalated to IT. Automation systems dutifully log it and notify the right team, but they stop there. They don’t correlate it with recent software deployments or uncover patterns from past incidents. The team is left manually piecing together the context—hours wasted on what should have been an insightful, proactive incident workflow.

Or an approval workflow that doesn’t account for when the approver is on PTO, travelling, sick or doesn’t work there anymore.

Why the hardest workflows remain out of reach

There’s a reason that all workflow examples in popular tools include password resets, email notifications and stakeholder communication. They are the low hanging, easily automatable fruit that have a flow. A determined ops manager will be able to set it up. However, when workflows also have to account for the messier, unpredictable elements of work (the “hidden iceberg” tasks)—finding critical context, making judgment calls, coordinating across teams, and dealing with exceptions, the solutions don’t work as well.

If this sounds like a pipe dream, it’s because it is one. Traditional automation tools are great for visible, structured tasks: routing requests, escalating issues, or tracking progress. They’re great for what you can see.

When these unseen parts of workflows aren’t addressed, they drag down service teams and create friction for the entire organization. To truly optimize workflows, we need a new approach—one that tackles not just the visible tip of the iceberg but also the vast complexities lurking below.

The reason traditional tools struggle with hidden iceberg tasks lies in their design. They’re built for structured processes—tasks that can be broken down into predefined steps, with clear inputs and outputs.

From automation to intelligence: The rise of agentic workflows

Agentic workflows, powered by AI agents, go beyond traditional automation to tackle the hidden icebergs as well.

AI Agents can learn from the environment and retrieve context on demand, plan and offer suggestions for optimal next steps (humans can be bought into the loop) and execute actions. This means agentic workflows can adapt dynamically, deftly handling a range of situations without predefined rules. A knowledge management workflow would enhance knowledge base searchability and updates, and provide precise, context-aware answers. An incident workflow would be able to not just detect major incidents that impact multiple users but also correlate incidents to underlying problems or previous similar incidents.

Over time, agentic workflows learn from interactions, identifying patterns and optimizing processes to continuously improve efficiency and scalability.

By addressing both the structured and unstructured parts of business workflows, agentic workflows act as an intelligent partner, helping service teams reduce inefficiencies, handle complexity, and focus on high-value initiatives.

The hidden iceberg of workflows isn’t going away—it’s only getting larger as the complexity of modern work increases. Traditional tools have taken us far, but they aren’t equipped to navigate the unpredictable, unstructured, and human-driven parts of work that weigh IT teams down.

Agentic workflows represent a new era of workflow automation. By actively addressing the unseen challenges beneath the surface, they empower service teams to move faster, handle complexity with ease, and focus on strategic initiatives that drive real impact.

The future of IT isn’t just about automation—it’s about intelligent collaboration between humans and AI. With agentic workflows, IT leaders can ensure their teams have the tools they need to thrive, not just today but in the ever-evolving landscape of tomorrow.