Syncing with ServiceNow - Participating in the ServiceNow Certified Master Architect program and Why it Matters

If you're a ServiceNow Architect, aim to become one, or work with Architects, this article could be useful for you!

I wanted to share with you my experience of the excellent ServiceNow Certified Master Architect (CMA) program that I'm lucky to be a part of.

Wait… What is that Certified Master Architect program?

ServiceNow has created a new "elite" program, to train and certify specialists, way above the “Implementation Specialist” level.

This is a six-month program, including 2 weeks of on-site trainings, and 4-6 hours per week of live webinars! This program is currently only offered to registered implementation partners and internal customer facing ServiceNow consultants. This program and certification is not intended for customers.

A typical participant is expected to be a veteran leader in the ServiceNow field, having successfully delivered many large, complex, global multi-product projects on the ServiceNow platform. They are required to have a special blend of technical expertise and soft skills in sales conversations and also post sales deliver domains allowing them to manage and communicate best practice advice and guidance with customers.

Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Fred Reynolds
Co-host: Eddie McDonald
Co-host: Mike Sabia

Transcript

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Andy Whiteside: Everyone welcome to Episode 28 of syncing with service. Now I'm your host, Andy Whiteside. I've got a great group with me on the what we call the modern app side here at Zintigra, Fred Reynolds, who runs the practice, Fred, how's it going?

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Andy Whiteside: Good, Andy, how are you doing? I am doing well. I forgot to do the commercial again, though. If you're a service now, customer, and you're out there, and you're not getting everything you can out of the platform. We're gonna talk to you a little bit about today what we can do for you. But if you're one of those customers and guys. There are a lot of those customers who are not getting everything. They thought they were getting out of the platform. Please reach out to Zintigo, reach out to me on Linkedin. Send me a private message love to help you.

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Andy Whiteside: We know that the opportunity to help people get more of the platform than they're getting, is there? II was somewhere over the last week where somebody said they got rid of service now, and it just killed me. I was on vacation. I'm like, why they started explaining why I was like, cause you didn't have a good partner. The product's fine, the product. Great. It's you. It's your partner like, more or less said that to them, and they honestly didn't take offense to it, cause they agree they really did.

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Andy Whiteside: And please let us know, cause you'll see through this episode. We continue to stack on to our powerhouse team years of helping customers. Yeah, we got a special guest. Eddie Mcdonald is not new, and he's been around a few weeks. Now, Eddie, how's it going, hey? It's going well, Andy, how are you today? I said, a few weeks. It's probably been a few months at this point. Yeah, yeah, it's been the beginning of. So about 4 months, or something like that something like that. I'm not sure. It seems like a lot longer. For some reason

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Andy Whiteside: I'm gonna put you on the spot here anything that you

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Andy Whiteside: anything that you're excited about coming here that you didn't think like you didn't realize coming into it.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: So besides, our skill set. We're gonna get into that on. Today's chat. The thing that I am most excited about. And re, I thought that it was good. But now it's been proven is that our culture is just dripping with enthusiasm. These are just good people that are passionate about what they're doing. And II,

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: Fred, and I've known each other for a long time, and I was expecting that. But to live it, and after our conference to share time with those folks. It th! The culture here has been the thing that excites me the most.

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Andy Whiteside: you know. It's hard not to be exciting when you're helping people. You're doing good. And you're making money all at the same time. That's

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: that's that's what your career is supposed to be about. Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside: alright. So our special guests. Mr. Mike Xavier is with us. Mike recently joins Integrra. Mike has a very special title here, Mike, welcome to the team.

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Mike Sabia: thanks, Andy. I appreciate it. I'm happy, really happy to be here at Santa.

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Andy Whiteside: So Mike is with us, one, because he's gonna be with us, often in these podcasts. But we're today, we're gonna talk about the the service. Now, master, architect, program and guess what Mike is a service. Now, master architect, Mike, I want you to start off by telling us what the program is, and why you were driven to get this.

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Mike Sabia: So we know source now is is a really capable and broad program. and you can be an expert in a certain area. But it's hard to become an expert in the whole thing and the service ma certified master architect kind of

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Mike Sabia: by evidence of being able to get into the program and going through the program. It verifies that this person is an expert on road mapping across all the products you can get into the details. He or she can get into details on particular products.

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Mike Sabia: working with a customer. We can identify what your imperatives are, what your business objectives are, and how we can strengthen your relationship with service. Now.

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Andy Whiteside: yeah, Mike, I probably jumped right into the meat of the topic on you. But, Fred, there's like Fred from your perspective, coming at it from a customer now leading a practice. What? What? What did the master architect? And getting Mike to come over and join us? What did what does that mean for the program? And and what is a master architect from your perspective? So from my perspective, let me start with the first that the team that we're building here is integr is a lot of like.

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Fred Reynolds: Eddie said. It's the culture, and I know the people. So, Mike, I've known for almost 10 years now I've worked with Mike in the past. I've seen Mike's journey. I've seen Mike grow and go after this. So for me, what I understood and been talking to Mike about, he was in that program as a master architect, you know, I realize that they have that program, but it takes years of experience to even really qualify or be part of that master program. So to me, as a partner, I want our customers to see

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Fred Reynolds: the investment that we're making in our team. I wanted our customers to feel comfortable about, you know. Hey? I wanna bring you guys in a consult cause, Andy, we do have a lot of really large customers. I have a lot of complex problems, and having a master architect on our team meant that I have another addition of a solution architect, but one at the highest caliber that could come in and help our customers with most complex architectural problems. They may have.

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Andy Whiteside: So, so, Fred, you knew, going into this, that Mike had the background. He helped you in other organizations, but now he has this certification, and he probably Mike.

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Andy Whiteside: We'll put Mike on the spot here, Mike, from the time you started working with Fred a while back to where you're at now, after completing the program. how much evolution and and is there anything specific that happened in the program that you would call out.

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Mike Sabia: II mean, personally, as an evolution up towards getting into this program, I went from a developer to a technical consultant, working with customers intimately, being a solution architect to being in pre-sales, and all of that allowed me to apply for the Cva program and be accepted.

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Mike Sabia: The C. May program has added above that absolutely the ability to to really present to customers in ways that they find engaging in order to help them understand what is possible with the program.

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Andy Whiteside: So it's more than just learning the the technical ones and zeros. And you know the architectural diagrams. They actually teach you how to make it more relevant to people

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Mike Sabia: the details, too. But yes, absolutely.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: you know. And I think it's also really important. You know, there are a lot of service now, partners out there. There's a lot of good ones, and there's equally, if not more, bad service now partners, and even though we have a nice deep bench of of really experienced people

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: having Mike as a Cma on our team puts us in the top tier it it se it really separates us from it puts us at the top of the bell curve. There's not. There's like a hundred cmas, and the world. Mike is one of them. It really sets us apart from everybody else, and especially all the ankle biders that are out there just trying to get work with a handful of folks. We're really showing our customers that we made the investment. We have the skill set.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, Mike, you know, to be honest, when when I found out you were gonna come, join us. I was a little surprised at first, but then I started to talk to Fred more about what meant to what me meant the most to you in terms of your engagements with customers. And all sudden it started to make sense. Is there is there something specific about the journey you've been on? And while you're with a and how you're with a up and coming partner that's wired the way we are today.

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Mike Sabia: you know, other. There are some larger partners, but they become a little unwieldy, and I had a role at my previous partner, and it was a good role, but the opportunity to come into a an upcoming partner who has a a defense of of of

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Mike Sabia: relationships with customers and build this organization the way it should be built. It was really appetizing to me.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, I mean, you know, from my perspective, there's lots of times where we work with these large organizations. Even we even do work with them large other other partners, and I know they have their heart in the right place. It's just

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Andy Whiteside: operating and and functionally getting it done and and investing back into the customer. And Fred was telling me this one about a customer that you know, was unhappy with us, and he went. Met with him last week, and in his honest opinion they should not have been unhappy with us. They called their own problem. But now he's doing things to make it right, because in the long term he's looking for what I call client client for life type of experience.

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Andy Whiteside: Cause the the article I have in front of me says, What is a master architect? You know, we've kind of skipped over, maybe going exactly into what they say here. What?

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Andy Whiteside: Well, master takes a trusted technical advisor, valued partner and digital transformation journey with service now

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Andy Whiteside: skilled and guiding customers with technology, strategy and governance as well as solution design best practices, guidance support customers across technical planning, execution, activity and building the right technical strategy and implementation, plan to designing platform to design the platform and governance process and operate MoD operating model.

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Andy Whiteside: You know that. Tease it up. For what then? We want to do, which is help a customer grow that environment maintain that environment. Be successful with that environment, Mike, is that what a master architect is, in your opinion.

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Mike Sabia: a a a good part of it, for sure. You know there's a lot of people out there who are well skilled in a particular product, but to, you know.

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Mike Sabia: bring that higher level, save not just the those zeros and ones, as you mentioned before, but put the guidance together. The best practices for building the business processes around it. That's where A. C may really assist. Now, obviously, I'm just one person, but I will be providing oversight and all of our engagements, and ensuring that our architects work at that level.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: You know, Andy, I think, as I read that with you I feel the most important word in that whole paragraph is the word advisor. That is the main differentiator. There are so many partners out there that are gonna be exceptional order takers. They're gonna give you exactly what you want. But without that advisory component.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: what you think you want might not be what you need. Mike is going to be here to give you those options, and to paint that picture of what is possible versus just the transaction. Well, let me also say, well, I think it really helps the overall practice to Andy, because

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Fred Reynolds: Mike has spent a lot of time in the program, and I know some of the the the, the things he had to do with it, to even learn and grow around workshops and things such as that. And and communication. It's gonna help the architects that we do have this gonna help all the resources we have, the senior developers. We have a lot of high end resources around bench. But taking the time to go through this and achieve the master architect.

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Andy Whiteside: Mike, is going to be our delivery lead. He's gonna be able to help spread that knowledge across the whole bench of who we have and help them become better as well. So I'm really excited about that. Yeah, Fred, as you were saying that I'm literally in my head, rewriting this paragraph to say, the master architect is part of a trusted team, and is the technical advisor. And then all of what this article says, right ideal world. You got a master architect that's part of a team of people all rowing the boat in the same direction.

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Andy Whiteside: But the outcome, for the customer being what the customer had in mind, or what the customer needs.

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Andy Whiteside: or whatever the journey needs to look like. So this customer, and probably most important thing here, and while the programming exists, so that service now has long term success, you know. Going back again to my conversation last week with someone about service. Now who number one said it was too expensive. Well, we can fix that. And number 2 said it just, you know, didn't work? Well, it it does work. You just didn't do it right. So II don't wanna get off on a tangent here. But when I hear somebody say that

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: service now is too expensive. Whoever their account executive is, didn't do a good enough job of building the value. The value is there 100% of the time. If your organization is log large enough without question, it's our job to build the business case and show you where the money and the savings is.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: So when somebody says, Oh, it's too expensive, it's absolutely not too expensive. But you're gonna have to spend a little bit of money to save 3 4 x that amount down the road.

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Andy Whiteside: So combination of getting the value out of the platform. I'd say, product platform as well as a partner. Maybe, like us making sure you're paying the right amount for that that the product of the platform that you're buying into?

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Andy Whiteside: There's a quote here from a guy named Tobias Schwartz. His quote is the Cma certified master Architect program has truly uplifted my service. Now, consulting skill set particularly in giving me more confidence to tackle, outcome, focus conversations with senior executives. Mike, does that align with how you feel about the program? Or would you say it differently.

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Mike Sabia: II would absolutely agree. Having come from pre-sales. I had some of that experience, and maybe some of the people don't have ha! Haven't had that experience themselves. So they have that practice for me. It helped me polish that that capability.

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Yeah.

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Andy Whiteside:  hey? I got a question for you totally one off as part of that program. Do they teach you how to answer questions the way you just answered it? What I'm getting is you a every question I ask you, you answer succinctly, you answer, and you answer it factually, and you get to the point is that part of the program.

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Mike Sabia: I don't know that it's a program per se, but getting to the meat of what the customers imperatives are. Hey? This is what you're trying to accomplish. This is how we're gonna do it. That is absolutely part of the program.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: And also, I think, Mike, you touched on it a second ago that you were also part of a pre sales team. So not all master architects have that skill set to your point, Andy. We've got an hour long call to uncover what the what the the scoping elements are. Mike doesn't have time to be fluffy. He's got to get to the point as quickly as he can. So it's kind of neat that you called it out. I've known Mike for a lot of years, and that's very much his mo.

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Andy Whiteside: II love that cause. That's a skill. Somebody ask you a question, answer the question and move on, because, you know, they got more questions a lot of really smart guys can't do that.

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Andy Whiteside: Alright, this last section of the article here talks about. Why should I get a master architect certification? I do want to talk about that. But I really wanna hear from Fred and Eddie as well as to why it matters to us. And I think if you answer this question, using the bullets here. It pretty much answers it from both sides of the equation. Mike, what? What's your thoughts on? Why somebody should get this certification.

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Mike Sabia: You can have expertise in certain areas of the program, and you can be good in your role. But there's always opportunities to

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Mike Sabia: enriching and and heighten that. And service now is master program is is kind of like a master's level program. That service now put together for their platform to be able to take the details and and create that better solution, to be able to present it, to be able to to raise your capability

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Mike Sabia: to a higher level it. It's invaluable. Now, there is a lot of steps you have to go through to get a master program. You have to been working for about 5 years at a partner level, working on very large projects. You haven't have to have a number of certifications, and then you have to apply, and a lot of good people I know, who have applied have not been accepted. It

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Mike Sabia: they they are very

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Mike Sabia: particular, and who they they accept. But if you have that effort, you have that drive, you have that interest, and you can express the fact that you're looking to work with your customer. Not just, you know, improve yourself.

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Fred Reynolds: It's a great program. So Andy, with these 5 things here, right? I think it's 4 main ones. I think it's really important, because, Noah Mike, for long as I haven't seen him on this journey, I mean, there's a couple of things one you have to have some experience. You have to go through and work with service now, for while to be considered, and that's because you have to go deeper, and you have to strengthen those types of knowledge across the platform. No one across the platform is one thing, being a master architect. To be clear is not that you're master. Every single application

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Fred Reynolds: system. There's too many. There's 130, some 40, some products. You're not gonna be a master at all. The biggest thing that I would say, is the differentiator to me. Invite coming here was was really the the

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Fred Reynolds: ability to be to articulate the solutions, talk at the sea levels, the timely spent. Really, how do you perform the right workshops you picked up on it? How we ask questions, how he answers questions. How do we get to that right is, Tom is sensitive. You gotta work through those things, but you have to have that dollar, that knowledge to depth, to that knowledge, to ask that and ask the right questions to get the results you want. So to me, I think that's what's more important, what I'm excited about getting in front of our customers so that he can help them articulate it to their C levels.

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Fred Reynolds: how and how to push different things with this solution. New applications, new ideas, how to how to really attack with their business solutions. And then also, you know, like, I said, internally helping our entire team be better and and grow in the same way.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: You know it to your point. There's a lot of benefits to becoming a master architect personally and professionally, but for my role. And my role primarily is, I educate our client executives, and I speak to customers.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: Being able to share that we have a master architect helps our customers be at ease knowing that the solution that we're going to provide is going to be best case is gonna follow. Best practice is gonna identify their business issues and address those again, not transactionally, but on a on a bigger conversation. That in my role is why it's so valuable, just knowing that

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: I have Mike there to support the business challenges that I uncover is invaluable.

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Andy Whiteside: So, Eddie, I'm gonna add, I wanna tweak that slightly knowing that you have Mike there as part of the overall team, and that Mike can lead that team. But if the team wants to stand up and say, No, no, I don't think we need to do it that way. We do it this way. You know, the team as a whole is better together as a unit, and having the master architect role as a as a leader in that organization.

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Andy Whiteside: And helping our customers, as you, said Phil, at ease, having you in a sales role, Phil at ease it, Fred at a director level, Phil at ease. Me as a you know leader, the company role filling an ease I have to tell you it really is a comforting feeling.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: very much so.

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Fred Reynolds: Yep.

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Andy Whiteside: all of that in the journey for creating customers, for life, for not only us, Integrra, but for our platforms and products we work with service. Now, in this case it really is a fun way to do business.

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Andy Whiteside: Mike. You've been on board 3 weeks, 4 weeks. How many weeks? Event

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Mike Sabia: just about 4 weeks? Yeah, 4 weeks.

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Andy Whiteside: favorite thing you've experienced so far with us, and it doesn't have to be related to a project or anything. But what's

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Mike Sabia: what's helped you Reaffirm, you made the right choice. We had our company kick off at the end of the year, and we had opportunity to meet each other, and I see the passion of everybody. You know. You can have a company meeting, and maybe somebody's grousing or complaining. Everybody was excited about making this a great company. That was the most reaffirming thing for me

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Andy Whiteside: that that's good to hear. I mean, I watched you, and taking it all in, and III was. That's what I hope you were picking up, and you know that blids over leads over to our customers, too. If we have people that don't fit, they don't stay. If we have customers that don't fit. They don't stay, you know we get. We get the choice to who we work with and how we work with them. That's what's super empowering and fun about this career that we have going on.

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Andy Whiteside: Well, guys, anything about the the master Architect certification program that we didn't talk about. You guys wanna make sure we cover.

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Fred Reynolds: I think Eddie mentioned there aren't many, and I'm not sure if he gave the actual number. How many are there? There's about 200 world wide world, maybe a less than 100 in the States, and a quarter of that. Is it service now itself?

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Mike Sabia: That's correct. Yeah, maybe even more than that, too, Mike. Right? But you know there are also partners who have cmas, but they don't leverage them, perhaps the way they they need to. So that's just another solution. Architect with the Cma title, the ability to do what we're doing here to take my ability and and broaden it to make sure the whole team is succeeding. That's key.

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Andy Whiteside: So, Mike, let's talk about that little. You know. I have lots of certifications, a lot of them. I just got so that I could get paid more. And, you know, fulfill requirements. You just made a really good point about how we want to use you different than maybe other organizations use it just to have somebody on the bench that has it. What are you excited about doing here that you don't think you would have got to do somewhere else.

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Mike Sabia:  As as I said, there's a lot of, or there are some partners who have essays who have the Cma title and it, and it makes them a good essay. But it doesn't broaden the whole organization. The ability to do that, the ability to work with our customers and give them that comfort that we are looking at. You know the the larger solution, not just the individual product that we're selling, not just doing what they ask, they will say, Hey, I want this. We're providing it. No, we're having the conversation

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: is this, what's actually meeting your needs? Right? And that's a that's a really interesting point. Because I love that. So Mike's gonna share his knowledge over the overarching team. You know, Fred and I are working. I'm a certified scrum master service now, safe implementation framework specialists. I'm sharing that information with our project team as well. So collectively, you know, the tide is rising, lifting all boats, you know, because of our efforts. And I love that.

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Yep.

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Andy Whiteside: yeah, I think we've talked about the team approach several times, and and what I think I know that Mike's gonna love here is, you know, if we're on a call, we're doing the team approach. Great! If Mike needs to jump on a plane and go see a CIO somewhere, and we're totally comfortable with him, leading that and having that conversation which we would be, you know he gets empowered for that role as well.

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Andy Whiteside: It's it's it's kind of fun to be able to do it all, but it's also fun not to have to do it all at the same time.

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Eddie McDonald - XenTegra: It's also it's nice not having the pressure to be the smartest guy in the room, cause I'm that's never happened when I'm in the room. So it's nice having Mike there.

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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, that's that's

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Andy Whiteside: we, we know. Alright, alright guys. Well, thanks for jumping on. Talk about this, Mike. I'm looking forward to having more conversations with you around other topics in the service now, world. Welcome to the team. Glad to have

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Fred Reynolds: Fred, Eddie. You guys show up if you want later. I'm still talking to Mike. Alright, guys. See, you have a good rest of the week. Thanks. You, too.