The Technical Operations Owner's focus is the support and maintenance of the underlying service technology. This role differs from that of the Business Operations Owner, whose focus is to provide end-user service support.
What does a Technical Operations Owner do?
For services built and maintained “on-premise,” Technical Operations Owners (TechOps Owners) are accountable for the operational support of the underlying technology. They frequently are either the manager or senior member of the technology team. For cloud-based services, the TechOps Owner is the person on the service team with the most functional knowledge of the cloud 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 are the general responsibilities of a Technical Operations Owner?
General responsibilities for both on-premise and cloud vendor provided services:
- Establishes integrations with other UIT provided services as required, including SSO, Workgroup Manager, etc
- Ensures the development and maintenance of technical documentation, including knowledge articles
- Participates in Root Cause Analysis reviews as needed
For on-premise services:
- Accountable for the installation and on-going support of the service hardware and software
- Assists with service provisioning upon request
- Implements identified technical remediations to ensure the security of the service
For cloud-based services:
- Serves as an escalation point with the cloud vendor during a Major Incident, or identifies a Subject Matter Expert who will serve in that role
What ServiceNow tasks is the Technical Operations Owner 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 Owner 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 coordinate problem resolution as assigned by the Problem Process Owner, identifying the appropriate team or individual, creating and assigning problem tasks as needed. |
As the person with the greatest technical knowledge of the service, the Technical Operations Owner is best placed to coordinate problem resolution and implement the corrective actions. |
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.
