About

Greg Mest

Welcome to my ServiceNow CMA (Certified Master Architect) blog, an independent voice on all things ServiceNow, using the lessons I’ve learned, experiences I’ve had, and thoughts I’ve mused. The goal of this blog is to give ServiceNow administrators, developers and architects things to chew on, particularly around the area of platform architecture and design. It is not to reiterate ServiceNow documentation or marketing, nor is it a “tip sheet” for one off solutions, although I may throw these in from time to time when it’s germane to the topic at hand. What I’ve found over my years is that ServiceNow’s approach and collateral has become more and more product and solution specific. It rarely puts things in a platform context, nor does it explain why to do something, rather than just what, where or how. It doesn’t explore a variety of options and explain the pros and cons of each approach. One of my goals for this blog is to help those with a broader vision of ServiceNow stories and examples that highlight this view of the platform, beyond the “ABC 123” of Product X.

I have been working with ServiceNow since October of 2010. I was employee #264 at ServiceNow – which if you include people who had come and gone – meant that I was one of less than 200 employees, hired right about the time when the company was transitioning from a true start-up to a “real” company, but at a time when things were still incredibly chaotic. Folks wore a lot of hats back then. While it’s stressful and hard work, you learn a lot in a short time, at least if you’re paying attention and are willing to dive in. I was hired as a Technical Consultant in Professional Services, which is an area where you’re really exposed to both sides of the coin: a customer-facing resource dealing with real-world customer problems, while also a ServiceNow employee exposed to the inner workings of the company with a lot of exposure to all areas of the business. (I often say that I worked there at a time where you could stand up at your desk and see 2/3 of the company.) One of my first clients was Kodak, if that tells you how long ago it was. Along the way I worked with Amgen, Expedia, Disney, Workday, Intel, T-Mobile and a host of others.

I worked at ServiceNow for almost 4 years. Needing a break from the consultant life, I took an offer from Workday to be their ServiceNow platform architect. I worked with an internal team of 8-10 developers and analysts to maintain and expand the platform across the enterprise. The greatest value derived from my time at a customer – rather than as a consultant – was to think longer term and broader about the platform. As a consultant, your time with a customer is finite and scope-of-work focused. While you try to think on term and broadly, your ability to do so is necessarily limited. A few of the highlights were an overhaul of the On-Call application with a new UI; setting up the platform and core data so that we could report on who was delivering to whom, organizationally, for every task in the system; and remodeling the Task States so that we could deliver a consistent experience across the platform (this will be covered in another post). Alas, after less than 2 years, Workday decided to re-org the IT department and put us under the Salesforce team, and suddenly I was being told how to design and develop ServiceNow by a Salesforce developer.

I went back to consulting in May 2016, working as a Technical Architect for Acorio, a leading ServiceNow partner. In 2018 I was accepted to the inaugural Certified Master Architect cohort (their word, not mine), completing the 6-month program and receiving the certification in mid-2019. Along the way I’ve been working with Stanford University, Gemalto, Wawanesa Insurance, lululemon, Grocery Outlet and Marathon Petroleum, among others. In 2021, I launched MOGE Consulting Company, an independent ServiceNow advisory focusing on strategy, implementation and maintenance.

In my journey, I’ve focused on the following areas: ITSM (of course), CSM, Custom Applications and Integrations. As mentioned previously, while my delivery has focused on particular areas of the platform, my mentality is always to think broadly: How does this particular application fit into the way the platform was built? Does it align with Fred and team’s original vision of the platform? This blog will get into some of my likes and dislikes in this area, so that others might be able to think this way and see the bigger picture when considering all things ServiceNow. I hope you’ll enjoy the content and I hope I’ll be able to provide a unique viewpoint.