Service Owner — The Missing ITSM Role

The Service Owner is accountable for a specific service (Infrastructure, Application or Professional Service) within an organization regardless of where the technology components or professional capabilities reside. To ensure that a service is managed with a business focus, the definition of a single point of accountability is absolutely essential to provide the level of attention and focus required for its delivery. Much like a Process Owner the Service Owner is responsible for continuous improvement and the management of change affecting the services under their care. In both cases these horizontal roles are effective or not according to the level of empowerment (true power) given to the lucky person by the executives of the IT organization. The Service Owner is a primary stakeholder in all of the IT processes which enable or support it. For example:

  • Incident Management: Involved in or perhaps chairs the crisis management team for high-priority incidents impacting the service owned.

  • Problem Management: Plays a major role in establishing the root cause and proposed permanent fix for the service being evaluated.

  • Release Management: Is a key stakeholder in determining whether a new release affecting a service in production is ready.

  • Change Management: Participates in Change Advisory Board decisions, approving changes to the services they own.

  • Configuration Management: Ensures that all groups which maintain the data and relationships for the service architecture they are responsible for having done so with the level of integrity required.

  • Service Level Management: Acts as the single point of contact for a specific service, and ensures that the Service Catalog is accurate in relationship to their service.

  • Availability and Capacity: Reviews technical data from a domain perspective to ensure that the needs of the overall service are being met.

  • IT Service Continuity: Understands and is responsible for ensuring that all elements required to restore their service are known and in place in the event of a crisis.

  • IT Financial Management: Assists in defining and tracking the cost models in relationship to how their service is costed and recovered.


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Is this role missing in your organization? Troy's Thoughts “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.” ~Douglas Adams

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Comments

I still do not see a clear difference in a role between Service Owner and Service Delivery Manager.

Of course, we do not have any of these roles in our organization yet.

Without a big shake-up in organizational change in IT, who should be taking these roles. We have application owner and asset owners in place.

Is Service Delivery Manager more operational oriented and Service Owner should have a strategic view of IT Service?

Chris Lee | May 3, 2007 at 1:05pm

Hello Chris

In our book on the service catalog we refer to the Service Delivery Manager as an owner of multiple services of like characteristics. For example: A Service Delivery Manager would be a Sr. Manager who is accountable for a grouping of back office infrastructure services such as File Print, Storage, Hosting, etc..

So is this view the Service Delivery Manager is a strategic role that owns a portfolio of services and manages them through the entire lifecycle. (Strategy, Design, Transition and Operation, and Continual Improvement)

However, if the word Manager bothers you for this role call this person what you would like. They key is that there are levels of accountability established for all IT capabilities and resources.

For example:

* Service Portfolio: Shared Infrastructure (Owner??)

* Service Owner: Storage (Owner??)

* System Owner: S.A.N. (Owner??)

* Component Owner: Server (Domain Owner??)

You are right that most organizations have not established ownership past the System Level and this is one of the inherent challenges with adopting a Service Management approach.

To manage services you need to understand what they are! In my experience less then 20% of IT organization have defined and manage their technology resources in terms of a service.

Troy

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | May 4, 2007 at 11:55am

Hi Troy

I agree that the Service Owner is the missing role in ITSM. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this role. I am currently working on aligning the role of Busines Delivery Manager (BDM) which I think is more along the lines of a Service Level Manager with the business and also want to introduce the concept of Service Owner. How do you see the role of SLM and SO interacting and the avoidance of duplication of effort. Also where do you see the CSI Owner sitting in the organisation and their relationship to the other roles already mentioned.
Kind Regards
Karen

Karen Ferris | May 22, 2007 at 1:56am

Hello Karen

The way I look at it the three key roles are.

Customer: He or she who is paying for the service

Service Owner: He or she who is accountable for delivering the service consistently in accordance with the business requirements and service design.

The Client Relationship Manager / Account Manager: He or she which uses the Service Catalog as the basis for developing and documenting agreements with the business unit customer.

The Service Level Manager in ITIL is a role that monitors and reports on the levels of the IT service being provided. Because this is a role and not a function this may be done by the Service Owner or perhaps there is a full time person which is responsible for the monitoring and reporting aspects of the IT Services.


The Continual Service Improvement Owner as you put it, can be seen in two ways.

ITIL v3 refers to a CSI manager as being over all the ITSM processes and is responsible for ensuring the measurement and improvement occurs over time through the use of formal and informal service improvement programs (SIPs).

However I believe you are referring to a person who sits over multiple service owners and is responsible for the strategic planning and improvement of a collection of like services. This is typically a Sr. IT Manager / Executive and is called by ITIL a Service Manager or in our Service Catalog Book a Service Delivery Manager.

Troy

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | May 27, 2007 at 1:16am

Hi Troy,

I am in the process of developing a service catalogue in my company and am finding your book invaluable. However, I am finding the concept of a Service Owner difficult to define. The people I am working with want to define the CIO as the service owner, since they argue he/she is ultimately responsible for the delivery of the IT services. But this is not my perception of what a Service Owner is. Do you have any suggestions for defining and making individuals accountable for a Service?

Lee

Lee Marshall | September 25, 2007 at 2:26pm

Hello Lee

As you can see from the comment that Chris left IT People have a real challenge with the concept of anything outside of a Technology Domain. Anything higher than that on the IT accountability level they typically want to assign to the CXX something.

However I think you would agree that this is not practical when it comes to individual services and their underlying systems. Someone, somewhere has to be accountable for a specific IT service that has time enough in their busy lives to actually plan, and manage the service as a consumable service.

I have actually written a paper that is appearing in an upcoming book on the subject of Service Organization Design that I believe you will find useful.

The Service Organization Part 4

http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/index.php?/troy/comments/the_service_organization_part_4/

Check out this blog post for the link to that paper.

Best Regards

Troy

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | September 25, 2007 at 4:47pm

Hello,

What are the specific differences between process owner and service owners in terms of their specific responsibilities?

Regards,
Anantha

Anantha | June 9, 2010 at 11:11pm

Hello Anantha

Please follow the link in the comment above to article “The Service Organization Part 4” You will find a link to a whitepaper I wrote on this topic which covers both roles.

Best Regards

Troy

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | June 10, 2010 at 5:39pm

The Service Owner is a business person, who is accountable to their business users, of group of users, for CIA - Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of the service being provided to them.
IT is only the Service Provider and is accountable to the Service Owners for the result of that service, as defined via the SLA.

The new trend is the BSM (Business Service Management); which looks at all services from a business perspective and not an IT perspective.

Carlo Figliomeni | June 9, 2011 at 9:16am

Carlo

Yes of course there is a Business Service Owner for a Business Service Such as “Branch Banking”. Branch Banking in term in supported by multiple IT Services in a Many to One relationship. Each of the IT Services Have an IT Service Owner who is responsible for the delivery of a of that Service to their Business Service Counter Part.

Your point is valid that above IT Services are Business Services providing outcomes to an outside market.  This is the true definition of BSM.

I have written an article on this here.

Reaching For The Future with BSM
http://www.bsmreview.com/troy1.shtml

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | June 9, 2011 at 9:51am

I think the ITIL definition of the Service Owner is weak because it has omitted the strategic context of the Service. I work in Health and an issue I have is that Service Management Boards and CABs are supported by the Service Management team who ensure that governance and process are considered. What the Service Management team can’t do is advise/decide whether we should accept and process Significant/Major Changes to develop an in-house service that will take a lot of resource or whether we should go to market to procure a 3rd party module. Without a strategic Service Owner we could waste time and effort and not deliver what the business needs.

Simon Williams | May 22, 2013 at 10:31am

Hello Simon

I certainly believe that the primary role of the Service Owner is to be the strategic owner of that service who is accountable for establishing, sustaining and improving business value.

I recommend the following PR Radio Episode
Practitioner Radio Episode 28 The Role Of The Service Owner http://bit.ly/N2n2xy

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | May 22, 2013 at 10:39am

Hi Troy,

Since service owner is “accountable for delivering the service consistently in accordance with the business requirements and service design.” Is it similar to IT admin, since they’re delivering the service to the business units?

Vivian | June 18, 2014 at 1:09am

Hello Vivian, it is difficult to comment based on what you mean by IT Admin. If this Role refers to a Senior IT Director or Executive then it is a bit different.

Typically you will have a Sr. Leader in IT own a Family or Category of services such as Web Services, Data Center Services, ERP Services, End User Services etc. Usually they will then have Service Owners at a Tactical level report into the Sr. Leader.

Both the Service Executive and The Service Owner will have a direct relationship with the Business Unit owner based on the level of discussion.

Troy

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | June 19, 2014 at 6:37pm

Hi

I am new into Service Delivery manager role but my objectives are very confusing. Are below objectives really sit with SDM from your point of view? I agree with some of them. We have Service Transition and Service Desk Managers but I feel like I am given their objectives as well as service owners. Should Head of production be the service owner for overall key services?  Also who in your opinion should own ITSM Tool?

1. Service Delivery - Ensure that all defined and supplied services are measured, aligned to customer needs, effective, documented and reported on. Ensure all services defined in the service catalogue are met and adhered to. Implement, baseline and refine SLA/OLA targets - as detailed in the Service Catalogue with the business. Maintain a full record of third party support contacts, training and dissemination of respective details.

2. Service Ownership - Ensure all
Service issues are owned, recorded and actioned.  Ensure a full risk register of all relating issues is kept and maintained. Where risks or concerns occur, plans and details surrounding these are to be detailed and presented for approval.

3. Service Improvement - Drive Service improvements to the ServiceDesk model to incorporate Core System monitoring as well as traditional first line services with appropriate Triage Services in place.  Ensure that during this evolution we still ensure value of service provisions and continue to shape the service provision to meet the demands of customers. Drive and maintain the structure for an expert level solution, where there are minimal service hand offs for customer incidents and greater numbers of calls are able to be resolved on the initial call and within the main frontline team.

4. Service Redesign - Redesign and rebrand the ServiceDesk Portal and IVR to drive greater usage, utility and scope for staff and IT Support Staff. Position Service to embrace the new ITSM solution (BMC) with minimal disruption to existing service supply. Ensure a full documentation library exists to cover all ServiceDesk Supported systems, as well as a known errors data base and FAQ section (staff and IT).

5. Service Transition Boarding - Ensure that all new services and systems have a documented and agreed service support model to them, which has been trained out to the whole support function and embedded with the support team.

6. Stakeholder Communication - Act as the relationship manager for Service owners, building productive and beneficial relationships. Champion, identify and manage Service Improvement opportunities and activities, as well as showing clear ownership of Service Delivery is not meeting expectations.

Rita | February 16, 2016 at 9:00am

Hi Troy - I’ve been reading your material and found it to be very interesting.  One thing I never seem to see discussed in forums like this are the political considerations implicit in establishing the notion of “service ownership.” 

The average IT organization typically solves for ownership of “things” that are easily identifiable (applications, infrastructure components, etc…).  This happens first and becomes the dominant organizing principle for most IT work. 

It is relatively straight-forward to then layer process on top of those structures and establish accountability for those processes.

Adding “service ownership” becomes the tricky part politically, since application or infrastructure owners and often process owners will assert themselves as “service owners” in these conversations.  The problem is that MOST of the services that can be identified span multiple components, so it’s difficult for these people to be really effective as service owners for a variety of reasons.

Messaging as a service is a great example.  Delivery of electronic messaging to an enterprise “should” be a multi-disciplinary endeavor and someone should be looking at the totality of messaging as a service.  In most enterprises, IF there is such a thing as a messaging service owner, it’s the “Email guy” who would raise his hand to say he’s “it.” 

Getting the “email guy” to cede ownership of the service called “messaging” is often politically difficult and is perceived to be adding an unnecessary and costly layer of complexity to the IT organization.

Has anyone else encountered this and how have you dealt with it?

thanks,

d

David Drahmann | February 16, 2016 at 10:53am

Hello Patel

The duties you describe below are more in alignment with the function of a Service Management Office vs a Service Owner. I would agree this is way to comprehensive for one individual

Please check out the following Podcast to provide additional context

Practitioner Radio Live Episode 22 – Service Management Office 2.0
http://bit.ly/1SRi3G3

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | February 23, 2016 at 3:02pm

Hello David

It is interesting that you bring this question up as I was just speaking with a group of people on this very subject last week at our annual conference.

Yes, the challenge for the Service Owner is how does one go about owning the lifecycle of a service when you don’t control all of the assets and elements, which provide its capability. Or in your words the Political Issues involved!

The answer to this dilemma can be found in the restaurant metaphor. In essence the Service Owner has to be considered like an internal entrepreneur who is building a business. A key part of this business is establishing offerings that people want to buy. This means figuring out voice of customer requirements and also includes market intelligence around feature and price point.

Based on this initial planning the key is to come up with a menu of offerings that will build your market share and allow you to acquire and keep your customers. Now building on this metaphor you would rightly expect to have full control over the menu offerings however you would never expect to own all the assets going into the running of the restaurant and the specific ingredients of the dishes you serve.

Every restaurant owner knows that they will have to develop a secure and reliable supply channel to ensure that the produce, dairy and meat products are delivered in sufficient quantities and at the right time. Likewise electrical power and rental of the facilities have to be details that have to be worked out.

Finally because we have a P&L to balance you would need to know if your revenue meets or exceeds your cost to stay in business.

In the end the biggest issue related to the political aspect of being a service owner is due to the fact that we don’t perceive them as running a service business within a business. For more information on this I highly recommend the following Podcast with Dean Meyer based on his book “Internal Market Economics”

PR 62 - How To Get The Money You Need For IT
Every Service Owner Is An Internal Entrepreneur
http://bit.ly/1c1zOzf

Also Chris and I did a PR Radio Show on the Topic of the Service Owner
Practitioner Radio Episode 28 The Role Of The Service Owner
Who Is Managing The LifeCycle Of Your IT Services?
http://bit.ly/1TE1226

Troy DuMoulin, VP Research & Development | February 23, 2016 at 3:54pm

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