When I started my ServiceNow career back in 2013 there were mainly three technical roles:

• System Admin
• App Developer
• Implementation Specialist

maybe those roles were enough at the time, however as the platform continues to grow ServiceNow introduced Architect certificate and also we now see a great emphasis on the architect role

so, What does actually ServiceNow Architect suppose to do ?

In my opinion, the main role of ServiceNow Architect is to ensure that the solution is

• Easy to understand and not complicated in nature.
• Implemented with minimal customisation and align to the out of the box solution
• Easily maintained
• Deployed as smooth as possible and not interrupting other business function

the main role suggests that ServiceNow architect should be involve throughout the lifecycle.

Big misconception about ServiceNow Architects is that they should pull back completely from Implementation and App development and focus only on high level issues. this doesn’t seem right.

ServiceNow Architects should still be counted as implementation Specialists, actually the best implementation Specialist in your organisation with understanding of platform architecture and overall software architecture should be your ServiceNow Architect.

You might say, you are wasting Architects time by involving them in the development work. why?

Here is why: ServiceNow Architects need to engage in the development/ implementation lifecycle because they can’t do their jobs properly without seeing problems that might be a result of architecture decision, also they need to be always ready to support technical team whenever they called