University IT
Service Manager Role
What are the general responsibilities of a Service Manager?
In our UIT context, service managers are defined as those in the organization who are responsible for the day-to-day activities that ensure our services run smoothly and:
- Meet service expectations: Ensures service quality and that agreements are fulfilled, meeting our standards and client expectations.
- Manage partnerships: Maintain relationships with vendors and other partners so services are delivered as expected. Escalate vendor issues to vendor management, Service Owner, and vendor for contractual issues.
- Address service issues: Take charge of resolving service-related problems quickly when they arise. Lead root-cause investigations to prevent issues from recurring.
- Track Health and Trends: Regularly evaluate delivery metrics and user feedback to ensure the service remains effective and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
- Oversee service changes: Coordinate the launch, modifications, or retirement of services as defined in our Service Release Process.
The Service Owner and Service Manager roles are sometimes fulfilled by a single staff member. This is common for smaller services and for services that are delivered through cloud vendors (Platform-as-a-Service [PaaS] or Software-as-a-Service [SaaS]). In UIT, the role of Service Manager is frequently a Manager in the organization that owns the service.
What ServiceNow tasks is the Service Manager responsible for?
| Task | Why it matters |
|---|---|
You confirm service offering (CI) name and details with the Service Owner and submit a Help request for the addition of a new service in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). You maintain the data integrity of the CI by updating your CI in ServiceNow, in a timely manner for changes to staff assigned to service roles, assignment groups, and change approvers. | Having your service offering in the ServiceNow CMDB is foundational in order to receive incident tickets, ensure they are routed to the correct support groups, and manage change requests. Updating the CI when staff change will ensure that tickets and change requests are routed quickly and efficiently to the appropriate staff and groups. |
You are responsible for managing catalog items throughout their lifecycle in the SNOW service catalog. For any request to add a new entry, change or sunset a service, you confirm the service description and details with the Service Owner before submitting the request. From there, you work with the assigned Business Analyst and service team to define a request workflow for efficient service delivery. | A service catalog entry is necessary in order for your clients to order or request your service. Request workflows can include integrations with cloud vendors to facilitate ordering, provisioning, and billing. |
| You maintain the list of service change approvers in the CMDB, and also prioritize and approve change requests at the appropriate level for the service. | A current list of change approvers is essential to ensure rapid and efficient handling and approval of change requests. |
You review the incident queue daily to ensure incidents are addressed as per the Service Level Agreement (SLA). You review incident reports and trend data as a way to improve service health and delivery. You are notified of Major (Priority 1) service incidents | The aim of incident management is to restore the service to the customer as quickly as possible. The regular review of incident reports is a way to identify issues before they become problems. |
| You review and approve knowledge articles prior to publication and on a regular basis to ensure they are up to date. You retire articles when no longer relevant. | Knowledge articles reduce the burden on service staff by providing clients with self-service information. It is also possible to create articles that are only available to internal support staff. By regularly reviewing and updating articles, we reduce the risk of outdated content, user confusion, minimize information bloating, ensure compliance, and provide useful resources for new and existing community members while maintaining consistency. |
You proactively investigate problems before they become major incidents by grouping incidents together in a single problem record. Create Problem records for P3 and P4 | An RCA will identify the underlying cause for recurring issues that impact the service health and delivery. |
Key terms
- Change Management: The process responsible for controlling the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services.
- Configuration Management Database (CMDB): The database in ServiceNow that holds information about the service including service name (CI), description, service role assignments, incident assignment tiers, and change approvers.
- Incident Management: An incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction in the quality of an IT service. Incident management is the process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all incidents. Incident management ensures that normal service operation is restored as quickly as possible and the business impact is minimized.
- Knowledge Management: Knowledge Management aims to gather, analyze, store and share knowledge and information within an organization. The primary purpose of this process is to improve efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge.
- Major Incident: A widespread, serious, major interruption or outage of a critical service that must be resolved with great urgency. They are classified as P1 and P2 incident tickets. The aim of the Major Incident Process is to quickly restore service with any means necessary, including workarounds.
- Service Catalog: The only part of the ITIL Service Portfolio published to customers, used to support the sale and delivery of IT Services. The Service Catalog includes information about deliverables, prices, contact points, ordering, and request processes.
