Select a service owner for an IT service

Statement of Best Practice

The service owner (SO) is accountable for the delivery of an IT service and the service offerings within. The purpose of this leadership role is to ensure that the service receives strategic attention and appropriate resources to support the mission and needs of the Institution. The service owner is responsible for the service as a whole through its entire lifecycle and is accountable to the person in charge of overall IT service delivery. The service owner’s accountability for a service is independent of where the underpinning technology components, processes, or professional capabilities, needed to deliver the service and its offerings, reside.

Ideally, the service owner is defined as part of creating the service and adding it to the Service Catalog as part of the Service Catalog Management Process. In many cases, services were operating in the live environment long before the catalog was formally established. As such, ongoing review and assessment of the individuals designated to this role will evolve over time.

Contact

• Assistant Director, IT Process and Planning

Definitions 

• IT Service: a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks; information maintained in the TDX Service Catalog
• Request Model: an action to subscribe or take specific action for a IT service; information maintained in the TDX Service Catalog
• IT Service Offering: a bundle of service components with slight variation to achieve a specific outcome; information maintained in the Assets application of TDX
• Service Component: a specific technology component of a service; information maintained in the Assets application of TDX

Policy

The service owner is the person who has high-level accountability for an IT service. This person ensures that the correct technologies are part of the service, and owns the service strategy, roadmap, and business plan. The service owner is also accountable for directing clients toward the right technologies to meet their needs as  well as ensuring that the products appropriately managed (including metrics).

Service owner is a strategic role, not an operational role. Operational accountability for the technologies that make up a service is out of scope of the service owner role. IT services are typically made up of multiple technologies that work together to provide value in the form of a service. While the service owner may have a specific interest in one of those underlying, component technologies, they should also be looking at the broader picture and how the components work together. Some organizations use the metaphor of the CEO of the IT service to describe the role of the service owner.

The business partner for a service is also a strategic role. They are also concerned with the strategy and roadmap for a service but are more focused on how the service factors into their business plan and objectives. They typically set service level targets and negotiate service delivery with the IT service owners. Their primary interest centers around the business objective and how a service might help achieve those objectives. An IT service may have more than one business partner, especially if slight variations of a single service, called service offerings, is needed to meet specific needs.

The service owner and the business partners work jointly to ensure effective solutions meet university needs.

Selecting an appropriate service owner is critical to the success of an IT Service. The qualifications below are compiled from various reference sources and conversations with service management practitioners.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Service Owner: responsible for defining and negotiating Service Level Agreements and ensuring that these are met
• Service Component Owner: responsible for lifecycle of a specific technology component. 
• Leadership Team Sponsor: member of the IT Leadership Team who inherits executive accountability for service provision from the service owner
• Business Partner (Customer): selects and deploys IT Services to use to fulfill business objectives

Selection Criteria for Service Owner

• Job role is primarily an IT role
• Experience in business relationship management
• Evidence of excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Experience and/or certifications (e.g., ADKAR) leading change, particularly that which has some negative impact
• Moderate depth of knowledge for service component technologies that are used together to deliver the IT service
• Effective negotiator
• Familiarity and/or certifications in IT Service Management concepts and terminology, such as ITIL, COBIT, SixSigma, IT4U
• Engaged in IT governance
• Working understanding of business concepts (e.g., return on investment, business case)
• Possesses existing relationship(s) with business partners
• Experience with data analysis

Related Documents, Forms, and Tools 

• Service Catalog Management Process
• Another higher-ed explanation of Service Owner Role at Notre Dame
• Educause ECAR white paper on Service Ownership