Miguel A. Garcia-Gonzalez

Background

About

Versatile, resourceful and knowledgeable ServiceNow Technical Architect (CTA certified) and project lead.

I take customers through a journey tailored to their needs in order to:

Deliver definitive solutions for durable success.
Make the most of their unique capabilities and resources
And optimise processes with better structure and automation.

On a more personal note:

I'm naturally passionate for problem solving and improving quality; taking personal pride from good work.
I also thrive in cross-functional environments by empathetically adapting my perspective and language to customers, delivery, sales and management; and building relationships and rapport as a foundation for better communication.

Some of my top inspirational books for work, have been "Black Box Thinking" and "The Phoenix Project", together with a few of Simon Sinek's main ideas.

Work Experience

Independent Consultant, Garlez
Jun, 2023 - Present
Technical Solutions Architect, FlyForm
Nov, 2021 - Mar, 20231 year 4 months
As a TA, I had the pleasure to collaborate consistently with all other teams:
- Developers; solving complex technical challenges and proposing technical implementation.
- Delivery team; helping to decide the best technical design and implementation strategy.
- Lead architect; to define and improve our standards, documentation and ways of working
- Pre-sales; providing initial scoping, high level estimates and a deeper insight to help customers define their challenges
- Sales; for the final technical sections of the SoW, including time estimates, detailed scope and project conditions
- Management & Leadership, while collecting input to improve our internal tools and processes and proposing win-win sweet-spot solutions to improve together.
Lead Technical Consultant, FlyForm - The Ultimate ServiceNow Partner
Nov, 2019 - Nov, 20212 years
As an LTC, I collaborated on 14 different projects of which:
- I led 7 clean implementations and 2 re-implementations
With some degree of ITSM, SLAs and Catalogue
- 7 of the above were Service Providers,
All of them included CSM and Portal

I also list the top most relevant activities and applications delivered
- 5x non-standard integrations
- 4x Performance Analytics reviews & configs
- 4x Starters-Leavers (JML) processes
- 3x Health Scan reports
- 3x Mobile App
- Plus a few version upgrades, SOX compliance, Domain Separation and HR
For all my projects, I keep close communication and collaboration with customers through all the phases, including:
Initial Discovery, requirement workshops, solution design & sign-off,
weekly updates, UAT, train the trainer, enablement,
org. change (OCM), deployment... and also hyper-care and beyond

(I'll provide further details and examples on request)
Principal Consultant / Associate Manager / Certified Instructor, Accenture
Nov, 2017 - Nov, 20192 years
Activities and responsibilities:
• Gather and agree requirements with stakeholders, plan smooth transitions to ServiceNow
• Propose suitable approach and timelines, resource planning
• Lead the technical development with hands on and also as a technical escalation contact
• Review (QA) to minimise defects and use results as improvement feedback.
• Engage with stakeholders and involved third parties during delivery.
• Organise and lead internal monthly sessions on lessons learnt and best practices to improve technical quality.
• Deliver training on Performance Analytics as a certified ServiceNow Instructor.

As a Technical Lead in Optimisation Services team:
The OS team provides support, roadmap guidance and continual improvement enhancements to returning clients who require such services after their initial implementation phase has proved successful.
• Manage engagements with clients, shape roadmaps with stakeholders and guide them through their improvement journey. Sometimes enabling stakeholders to apply basic configurations.
• Lead other consultants through technical development once signed off, handle technical escalations and review the technical quality before delivering to the client.
• Multiple Service Portal designs in direct collaboration with our clients for continuous feedback.
• Plan and perform a high number of version upgrades for some of these clients.
• And engage in all projects at a semi-technical level.
Senior Technical Consultant, Focus Group Europe
Jan, 2016 - Oct, 20171 year 9 months
Main responsibilities and achievements:
• [Global Estate Agency] Drive requirements workshop for ITSM with CMDB, Service Portal and Joiners-Leavers process. Propose and agree a simplified solution and supervise the development and delivery.
• [Swiss Asset Mgmt] Understand the needs of the stakeholders and propose a technical solution to implement a Joiners-Leavers process with a REST integration using ServiceNow Express.
• [Global Satellite Comms] Supervise migration to ServiceNow with implementation of a CMS Portal, Event Management and a JDBC integration for the CMDB, among other areas.
• Many other diverse workshops, consulting days and tailored enhancements, including initial implementations of multiple ITSM projects with Portal for multiple companies.
Direct Report: Rich Holdford, Saria Younus
Servicenow Administrator and Developer, CERN
Mar, 2013 - Dec, 20152 years 9 months
ServiceNow developer and support administrator as part of CERN's Service Management Support group. Main responsibilities and achievements:
- Initial setup, deep customization and later migration of Performance Analytics (originally Mirror42)
- Implementation of a customized version of Servicenow 'Work Tasks'
- Development of the new "Service Availability" information page.
- Configuration of some SOAP and REST web services for integration with other systems (Infor EAM, QMind, etc.)
- Provide technical support for the tool
- Diverse additional customizations, scripting and configuration in general
  Main technologies: Javascript, SOAP/REST Web Services, HTML, CSS, jQuery, Jelly
Research Collaborator - "Integration of Microsoft Kinect as part of a general robotic architecture", European Centre for Soft Computing
Jan, 2012 - Jun, 20125 months
Development of two software applications for the "Robot Operating System" (ROS) environment.
- Generic device input/output interface written in Python
- A C++ module for measuring movement based on images captured from a Microsoft Kinect device (visual odometry).
  Main technologies: Python, C++, Microsoft Kinect and Robot Operating System
Research Intern, Universidad de Oviedo
Apr, 2009 - Sep, 20095 months
Cooperate on the design of a stereoscopic computer vision system using C#, the OpenCV library and two Nintendo Wii remote controllers as IR cameras for the input

Education

Computer Engineering, Master in Computer Engineering, Universidad de Oviedo
Dec, 2006 - Dec, 2012
, Master in Computer Engineering, Lulea Tekniska Universitet
Dec, 2011 - Dec, 2011
- Pervasive Computing

Certificates

Certified Application Specialist – Performance Analytics, ServiceNow
Issued on:
Suite Certification – CSM Professional, ServiceNow
Issued on:
Suite Certification – ITSM Professional, ServiceNow
Issued on:
ServiceNow Certified Application Developer, ServiceNow
Issued on:
ServiceNow Certified System Administrator, ServiceNow – The Enterprise Cloud Company
Issued on:
ITIL Foundation Examination, AXELOS Global Best Practice
Issued on:
PRINCE2® Foundation Certification Training, PeopleCert
Issued on:

Volunteer Work

English Language Assistant, TiPi Cafe DaNang
Apr, 2018 - May, 2018
In countries like Vietnam, mastering English is still a huge differentiator skill and TiPi Cafe is a great initiative providing this opportunity to locals.

Not only the local people can come to the Cafe and practice their English over a drink but also get to know people from other countries and share our cultures: which works both ways allowing people like me to understand them better and help them with their English during some weeks.

With TiPi, I also had the opportunity to teach in a class-format to adults and kids. The second was a bit of a surprise but I was there to get out of my comfort zone and it was definitely worth it.
Reception and guide, Kuang Si Falls Butterfly Park
Feb, 2018 - Mar, 2018
An Educational project in the beautiful remote area around the Kuang Si falls in Laos and probably the most beautiful place where I could have volunteered.

Changing my way of living for some weeks proved worthy challenge; participating in a completely different project with another perspective and context has been the change that I was looking for.

The owners Olaf and Inke played a really huge role in this lesson, and also the other volunteers, from different backgrounds, who went through the same stages: everything was part of an important learning experience.
Volunteer, Elephant Nature Park
Jan, 2018 - Feb, 2018
Elephant Nature Park is one of the most conscious Elephant Sanctuaries in the world, to the point that they purposely avoid the word "Sanctuary" to show that there's a lot of work still ahead.

With this idea as a starting point: it's easier to imagine the amount of things that we've learnt in just one week and how meaningful the experience was for each and every volunteer.

On a deeper note: this volunteering was more about learning and supporting; while not so much about the physical work. Even when working under the Sun, success was more in understanding that really getting things done. The real help to the Elephants starts later on: by spreading the word and inviting other people to participate and be more conscious.

References

Francis Cavaciuti
Miguel is an all round superstar, his knowledge, commitment, integrity and great personality, make him an indispensable part of any team or project he's involved in.

I've had the pleasure of working with Miguel in a couple of different settings, the first, as a customer receiving consultancy from Miguel and the second, more recently, was as a colleague working for the same partnership. In both settings I was impressed by his knowledge of the platform and his hard working attitude.

As a customer I was reassured by his ability to speak confidently on ServiceNow functionality and offer guidance and assistance with our implementation needs.

As a colleague, I found Miguel immensely supportive and I regularly went to him for advice and assistance. His logical and considered approach to working through problems, produces great solutions.

Miguel is one of those people who you can rely on whatever the challenge, as I said previously, an all round super star.
Adam Hurley
I've been super-impressed with Miguel. His flexibility and desire to help and find solutions was tremendous! I really appreciated his attitude. He would always seek understanding before answering questions or proposing solutions. His expertise was self-evident through our entire engagement and his contribution from our earliest workshops through to the very end was outstanding. So helpful and a pleasure to work with! I would recommend him without any hesitation and hope we can work together again.