University IT
Technical Operations Lead Role
What are the general responsibilities of a Technical Operations Lead?
A Technical Operations Lead is the lead technical expert responsible for the health, security, and reliability of the technology that powers a service.
While the Service Owner sets strategy and the Service Manager handles day-to-day user-facing operations, the Technical Operations Lead focuses on the systems behind the service.
- Maintains the Technology: For on-premise services, accountable for installing, configuring, and supporting hardware and software. For cloud services, serves as the technical expert on configuration and administration. Designs, maintains, and evolves the service architecture to align with Service Owner–approved criticality and resiliency requirements and assessments.
- Connects Systems and Maintains Documentation: Ensures proper integration with other university systems (like single sign-on) and keeps technical guides, runbooks, and knowledge articles accurate and current.
- Evaluates and Implements Technical Changes: Assesses technical risk and impact of proposed changes, then leads or performs the work to implement approved changes safely with clear rollback plans.
- Leads Technical Problem-Solving: Investigates recurring or complex technical issues to identify root causes, implements permanent fixes, and keeps on-call instructions current for rapid response during outages.
- Acts as Technical Escalation Point: Serves as the primary technical contact during major outages, working directly with vendors or internal teams to restore service quickly. Participates in Root Cause Analysis reviews as needed.
What does a Technical Operations Lead do?
They are frequently either the manager or a senior member of the technology team. For cloud-based services, the TechOps Owner is the service team member with the most functional knowledge of the service. For cloud services in particular, it is important to identify a TechOps Owners who is prepared to serve as the escalation point with the vendor, in the event of a Major Incident. The TechOps Owner can also delegate this responsibility to a Subject Matter Expert.
What ServiceNow tasks is the Technical Operations Lead responsible for?
| Task | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| You determine the feasibility and impact of changes and change requests on underlying systems that may impact service availability. | Adhering to Change Management best practices minimizes the potential for service disruptions and outages. |
| You implement approved change requests or lead the team that does. | The Technical Operations Lead has the greatest knowledge of the underlying service technology and is best placed to evaluate change requests. |
| You frequently review and update the OnCall instructions in the service Configuration Item to ensure its accuracy. | Providing accurate OnCall information supports the speedy restoration of service availability during a Major Incident or after-hours support. |
| You are notified of promoted Priority 1 and Priority 2 major incidents. | This fosters awareness, transparency, and accelerates the escalation of a promoted Major Incident, resulting in a quicker resolution |
| You coordinate technical investigation/RCA contributions from SMEs for assigned problem records and drive completion of the resulting technical corrective actions, escalating risks and delivery constraints to the Service Owner and Service Manager. | RCA identifies underlying causes so corrective actions can be prioritized and completed, improving service stability and reducing repeat incidents. |
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.
- 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.
- Problem Management: A problem is the cause of one or more incidents. The primary objectives of problem management are to prevent problems and resulting incidents from happening, to eliminate recurring incidents, and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.
