I’ve written in the past about the nicely crafted accountability model that exists within ITIL. (See http://www.itsmwatch.com/itil/article.php/3794216/The-IT-Accountability-Model.htm).   One of the most prevalent questions we get what person or area of the organization is best suited to play the role of process owner.  Unfortunately, the standard consultant answer, “It depends…” is the answer.  But the following guidelines might help to pinpoint be best person or place for these roles for some of the more commonly implemented processes:

Process

Incident Management: One could make a good argument that this role should be owned with the Service Desk function.    Whether or not it is the Service Desk Manager who assumes these responsibilities depends upon the size and nature of your service desk.  Service Desks that handle more than 200 calls per day, should consider this a dedicated role – particularly if this person is also responsible for oversight of a Major Incident process.  This person should be reviewing incident metrics, documentation, opportunities to turn data into knowledge, and implementation of continuous improvement metrics.  This person also has to rally staff that are outside of the Service Desk to participate within service level commitments, for issues that need to escalate to groups with deeper element-level skills.  This is one of the easier processes to find a process owner home for.

Problem Management: Problem management has two missions:  get to the root cause of the reactive issues (the incidents that have occurred) and proactively identify trends as a means of identifying problems.  Tougher to pinpoint a definitive owner here.   In larger organizations, we have seen the emergence of a service delivery function where this role may logically reside.  In smaller enterprises the oversight of this process may also reside in the Service Desk or within the realm of Event Management (monitoring – perhaps a NOC group), being mindful that it cannot conflict with the incident management goal of rapid restoration.   The individual responsible for Problem Management must be able to leverage resources from level 2 and 3 organizations outside of their direct functional responsibility to perform successful root cause resolution and to assist in the identification of trends.

Change (Configuration & Release) Management:Many think  of  Change Management as an operational function – likely due to its role in protecting the “production” services through prudent evaluation of risk versus benefit.  It is, however,  a governance role – a control point and oversight for two other tightly related processes: Service Asset & Configuration management (SACM) and Release & Deployment management.   Some large organizations have Enterprise Risk Management functions in place where  Change Management would find a logical home.  Small organizations may assign the ownership of all three processes to one individual as an approved Change drives asset and configuration repository updates and spawns the release of developed changes to production.  All three represent a collective of governance over the risk and quality of service delivery.   As with Incident and Problem management processes. Change, SACM, and Release & Deployment necessitate the oversight and cooperation of cross-functional teams within the IT organization – always a consideration in determining “where” a role should reside organizationally.

Bottom Line

The typical first approach to this in most organizations is to not “upset the apple cart”, but slotting these roles into existing organizational buckets.  This might be a good initial pass, but the cross-organizational nature of Process  requires a longer term strategy for success.  This may mean some restructuring within the organization that positions process owners with the empowerment necessary gain cooperation and compliance to process from stakeholders throughout the organization.  Considering a Service Delivery organization or a Governance organization  outside of the standard IT organization silos that is staffed by managers that have the seniority and expertise to drive cross-functional efforts may be a key to a lasting strategy for Service Management effectiveness.

Valerie Arraj
valerie@cppit.com