In the face of extreme competition, enterprises are looking at reducing their overall IT operation costs to a minimum. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has become a widely-recognized standard for IT Service Management (ITSM) and administration services in an organization. Implementing ITIL requires the extended support of resources in an organization to fully realize the benefits that it offers.
In ITIL, there are various functions and roles that require a larger base of personnel to perform their task on a regular basis. And enterprises that are under a budget constraint can only fit a certain number of IT staff for many roles. Though a person can take on several roles, it is important to optimally combine them. However, it depends on the size of your enterprise and the ITIL processes that you have implemented, but the fact is some roles fit and some do not. So, let us take a look at which roles can be combined in ITIL Service Lifecycle and which cannot.
Job Roles that Fit together in ITIL Service Lifecycle:
1. Business Relationship Manager and Service Level Manager:
The job role of the Business Relationship Manager is to manage and maintain good relationships with customers and ensure the service catalog is meeting the needs of the customer. And customer relationship is all about delivering agreed-upon service levels, both the Service Level Manager and Business Relationship Manager job roles match very well. Moreover, the Service Level Manager’s job is towards initial negotiations about the service levels, so that makes him a very good substitute for Business Relationship Manager, as he is aware of the customers’ needs.
2. Capacity Manager, Availability Manager, and Problem Manager:
A Capacity Manager’s job role is to ensure all infrastructure and services are able to deliver reliable performance and capacity in a cost-effective manner within agreed levels irrespective of whether it is provided internally or externally. In fact, these responsibilities fit nicely with the Availability Manager’s role in the meeting agreed on service availability for critical processes. Moreover, both roles include planning, analyzing, measuring, and improving available resources at hand against expected service levels.
As both Capacity Manager and Availability Manager include monitoring the performance of individual service components, it may be even complemented with Problem Management role as well. The Problem Manager’s job role is to prevent certain incidents from happening and minimize the risk of incidents. Because the Problem Manager has insights into overall service components’, he can be a better fit to handle both Availability Manager and Capacity Manager job roles as well.
3. Risk Manager and Service Continuity Manager:
You can easily combine both Risk Manager and Service Continuity Manager as their job roles majorly focus on the future and look for the best possible outcomes in case of any disastrous events. Moreover, both roles are responsible for threat identification, risk management, and ensuring acceptable or no impact on service delivery if all those events occur. The only subtle difference is that the Service Continuity Manager focuses on Force Majeure and disaster events, and the Risk Manager’s job role is all about risk assessment of enterprise assets and their vulnerabilities. Hence, these two job roles can be easily filled by a single person.
4. Service Asset and Configuration Manager and Knowledge Manager:
The job role of the Service Asset and Configuration Manager is to maintain information about enterprise assets, configuration items, and their relationship. This important role is similar to that of a Knowledge Manager, who is responsible for maintaining information about knowledge available in an enterprise. Because there is so much similarity in processes, you can share these two roles with a single person.
5. Service Desk Manager and Incident Manager:
You may argue that Service Desk Manager’s job role has a wider scope of responsibilities than the Incident Manager, but then the bottom line of both roles is to resolve incidents at the earliest. A service Desk is a place where all the incidents are reported and this makes sense to resolve them on the spot. Hence, this makes a valid argument that both Service Desk Manager and Incident Manager roles can be handled by a single person.
Job Roles that do not fit well Within the ITIL Service Lifecycle
1. Test Manager and Release Manager:
You cannot combine these two roles for the obvious conflict. The job role of a Release Manager is to plan, control, and release a particular service into the live environment and Test Manager’s role is to conduct all the necessary tests to ensure the service meets original requirements. You see that there is a conflict of interest between both the parties where the Release Manager strives to get the service up and running as soon as possible and the Test Manager will take as long as possible to test the service properly.
2. Problem Manager and Incident Manager:
ITIL experts believe in a less-obvious role combination of Problem Manager and Incident Manager. The job role of the Incident Manager is to handle an incident and create a resolution or workaround. Whereas the Problem Managers’ main responsibility is to identify the root causes of the incident and is not interested in any sort of quick fixes – this will take more time which the Incident managers are not ready to accept.
3. Service Owner and Process Owner:
This is one such less-obvious combination of ITIL roles that need to be avoided Service Owner and Process Owner. The job role of a Service Owner is to deliver the service requirement (e.g., e-mail service) within the agreed service levels. Whereas a Process Owner who owns change management, service portfolio management, and incident management will be ensuring the process is fit for purpose and to run in an optimal way. As the Process Owner is in charge of many such services he may be under the obligation to look at particular processes through a Service Owner perspective, and this should be completely avoided in an ITIL lifecycle.
Enterprises may feel obligated to combine roles, but it is a challenge for both small and large organizations in equal measure. Common sense should prevail while combining job roles in ITIL, as you cannot appoint the same person to report to himself and approve his own recommendations, technical solutions, and more. It takes certain experience for an organization in ITIL to understand the job roles that fit better. If you are new to ITIL, then hiring an ITIL expert will help you to find the best fits to combine job roles that can be performed by a single person.
