Back with the series: ServiceNow CTA Journey – Part 5: Week 4- "Design Less Think More"

“We thought we had the answers but it turns out, we were asking the wrong questions.”

This quote resonates quite well with the essence of Week 4. True progress doesn’t begin with certainty -it begins with curiosity. It’s in the courage to challenge assumptions and stand by thoughtful choices that innovation truly takes root.

In Week 4, the answers weren’t served on a platter - they had to be uncovered.

Imagine:

➡️ Choosing between Scrum of Scrums and SAFe for a bank whose teams are halfway through an agile transformation-how do you pick the right fit without derailing progress?

➡️Justifying a new instance environment to the customer when they’re sceptical about adding complexity but it’s actually the key to reducing production risk during a major upgrade.

➡️Convincing stakeholders that governance isn’t just red tape, but the safety net that prevented a previous roll out from spiralling out of control.

➡️Making decisions with incomplete data, knowing you’ll need to defend every assumption in front of executives.

What I learned:

A good architect doesn’t just build solutions-they defend them.

💡Good architecture solves problems.Great architecture defends outcomes.

What? Why? How?

What: Moving from “build this” to “why build this?”

Why: Because ambiguity is the challenge, not the roadblock

How: By asking the right questions, owning your assumptions, and connecting every decision back to business value