Employee Recognition: John Gubatayao
Please join us in congratulating John Gubatayao for successfully earning ServiceNow’s Certified Technical Architect (CTA)
What catalyst started you on this process for your CTA Certification?
I have always been interested in a ServiceNow Certification for Technical Architecture, and I first heard of the CTA Program through a ServiceNow Partnership meeting. So I was very happy to be in the First Public class. The Certified Technical Architect is the second-highest certification offered by ServiceNow.
What was your commitment level to be in this program?
It’s a 3-month program, and it runs over 12 weeks. You commit to your team, weekly teamwork, training, classwork, and end-of-week examination. Every Friday, there’s a virtual collaboration session of about 30 people for 2 hours in a virtual classroom, where they pick 2-3 groups to present on that week’s coursework.
There is a lot of live interaction with classmates asking about the material, working with ServiceNow Master Facilitators running the virtual collaboration session, and asking questions to groups structured as cohort learning. There is lots of participation involved in getting the most out of the class.
Any familiar faces in ServiceNow’s Certified Technical Architect Class?
ServiceNow’s Certified Technical Architect class included peers I’d worked with before. For example, my friend Joe, whom I worked with back in the day, was on my team, and Ben, who worked here at Milestone.
There were people that I interacted with from the SN community over the years. It’s like attending Knowledge – when you bump into everyone you know, so that was a fun aspect of it getting to reconnect with your peers.
What were your biggest challenges?
My biggest challenge was working with the team every week on our group presentation. We had to take a large amount of training material and condense it down to a concise 10-minute presentation. I had to work on the weekends prepping the material a lot of the time. Meanwhile, during the workweek, I met with my teammates. We collaborated on the Zoom chat channel, revised the slides, and landed on our final format. Finally, you must do a live recording of your presentation, which means building your deck, recording your presentation, then uploading that recording for the ServiceNow Master Facilitators and the students to review.
How did Milestone support you in ServiceNow’s Certified Technical Architect program?
Milestone tremendously supported my earning ServiceNow’s Technical Architect Certification. Not only did they fund my program fees, but they also provided me with the very valuable business hours (time) to participate in the class. Milestone adjusted my project assignment resourcing to accommodate my class time obligations during this course. Milestone made my certification possible.
What advice would you give to others going through the certification process?
I suggest being ready for the time commitment requirements of the program. Make sure to have enough time to participate in the weekly sessions and contribute to your team’s weekly projects. In addition, be ready to commit night and weekend hours to the program.
Anything else you’d like people to know…
I strongly recommend the Certified Technical Architect program especially for the collaborative learning and bonds of friendship. It’s fantastic working with peers across the ServiceNow ecosystem. It was a lot of fun learning from my fellow cohorts. I encourage anyone interested in the technical architecture of ServiceNow to pursue a ServiceNow CTA.
