Senior Transition Manager

Alcor is seeking to hire an IT Service Transition Manager with experience of delivery in a distributed multi-vendor environment, to provide service leadership of an ITIL aligned IT Service Transition Management service within a key Alcor customer. ABOUT ALCOR Alcor is a global cloud advisory and implementation services company serving clients in multiple geographies including North America, Europe, Japan and India. Our clients include global Fortune 500 companies, Government agencies and leading organizations in multiple industry verticals. Founded in 2008, Alcor's focus has been building strong competency on cutting edge technologies and advising clients in implementing them. We have partnered with industry leading cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) platform providers to bring cost effective, rapid implementation cloud solutions to our clients. We are passionate about our thought leadership and believe that successful technology implementations result equally from good business acumen and technology excellence. Our experienced consulting team advises leading businesses on cloud platforms, architecture, enterprise service management and integrating IT service delivery. Learn more by visiting our website AIM OF THE ROLE: The aim of the role is to oversee the transition of new and changed services into, and/or the decommission of services out of the production environment. This combines a clear focus on ensuring timely completion of required preparatory activities, the understanding and appropriate management of risk associated with the transition of IT services, and facilitating the validation/acceptance of the services by the relevant operations, support, and service delivery teams. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: Duties will include, but are not restricted to the following: Ownership of the Service Transition Management service design • Engage with the business to establish context, requirements, and constraints to the effective delivery of Service Transitions; establish and agree a plan to address identified constraints. • Produce and maintain service roadmaps and detailed service plans that support delivery against both short-term tactical and long-term strategic service objectives. • Ensure a clear service scope statement is in place, identifying the qualifying criteria for when the Service Transition process should be engaged for new and changed services, and defining a clear process engagement pathway. • Articulate required Service Design Package inputs into the Service Transition process and work with key stakeholders to standardise and formalise these where appropriate / possible. • Establishing and operating a clear framework of transition governance controls that identify and manage service design and/or service build gaps and risks. • Identify and define process integration with wider Service Management controls, including SACM, Knowledge Management, Release Management, and Change Management • Produce and maintain a suite of relevant service documentation. • Implement a cycle of continual service review and improvements to the Service Transition processes.. Service Transition Management Planning & Coordination • Plan and Coordinate service transition activities across all stakeholder groups. • Manage and monitor progress of service transition releases, changes, risks, and issues. Track progress of project activities, transition actions and mitigation of risks • Ensure that good quality knowledge and information is updated in the CMDB, AMDB, and Knowledge Base throughout the service transition. • Where required, assist in the development of project/BAU processes to support the effective onboarding of users to sites & services. Acceptance into Service, Early Life Support and Hypercare • Facilitate the formal agreement of acceptance criteria with the service owner, relevant operations, support, and service delivery teams to move the service into the production. • Conduct Service Readiness Reviews prior to service cutover to ensure all required service elements specified in the service design are in place prior to move into production: o Plan, chair and document readiness reviews, including initial Service Readiness Assessments and Go/No-Go decision points. o Ensure adequate representation from the key service stakeholder groups. o Record and publish actions to address readiness gaps. Monitor completion of all actions, including where actions are outstanding following a 'Go' decision. o Record and publish open service risks prior to service cutover. Manage agreed risk management actions to completion where possible, and roll-over unresolved risks to BAU as part of service acceptance. • Work with process stakeholders, including the relevant operations, support, and service delivery teams, to: o Review and validate that services can be managed, operated, and supported in accordance with constraints specified in the relevant service design. o Equip key operational teams with the necessary skills, knowledge, tools, and documentation to support new or changed services. o Validate that the relevant service repositories have been updated with all relevant data and information to enable efficient service support, such as CMDB and Asset repositories, knowledge base and service catalog. • Confirm that Release and Change requests / records are appropriately structured and approved in order to provide authorisation to proceed and maintain regulatory compliance. • Define the roles and mechanisms of IT Service Management processes in the Early Life Support period. • Act as the Service Management lead for new services during the Early Life Support period, providing continuity between project and run-state stages. • Facilitate the formal agreement of acceptance criteria required to end the Early Life Support period. Service Reporting & Communication • Act as the prime interface for service transition planning and reporting. • Create and maintain relevant service reports to provide insight to stakeholders into service health and performance. • Identify and publish service performance targets and measures for the Service Transition service, ensuring alignment to industry standards and business needs. • Plan and deliver broad, detailed communications, as appropriate to the audience(s), providing status updates, visibility into service pipeline and planned service improvement activities. PERSON SPECIFICATION The ideal candidate will be an experienced service management professional, with a compelling history of leading successful IT Service Transitions, as well as having led design and build activities across the end-to-end Service Transition process. This is a customer facing role, so a positive, professional, and engaging approach is essential, along with the ability to demonstrate a strong track record of exceptional stakeholder management, strategic planning, and prioritisation along with examples of consistently high delivery standards, effective communications, and delivery of significant process improvements. Essential Experience & Qualifications • Extensive experience of leading successful IT Service Transitions across a range of environments and technologies. • Expertise in authoring, reviewing, and amending varying Service Designs of varying standards, approaches, and quality. • Outstanding planning and prioritization skills. Ability to determine criticality and priority based on facts at hand. • Exceptional communication skills in both oral and written format, including specific experience with customer senior management. • Proficiency in establishing strategy and building/maintaining service roadmaps and plans. • Experience facilitating and leading cross-functional meetings and workshops with well-formed agendas and timelines across all levels of the organization. • Proven ability to create effective reports aligned with service priorities and expected process outcomes. • Evidence of an understanding of new technologies and their support issues • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. • Flexible – the ability to adapt to changes in demands, priority, and timelines. • Demonstrable experience of managing own workload, against a backdrop of external deadlines • Project Management qualified, with demonstrable experience of using methodologies to deliver service transitions / projects (e.g. PRINCE2 / APM / PMI /Agile / Waterfall)• ITIL foundation certified. • High level of IT literacy, including MS Office products. Desirable Experience & Qualifications • ServiceNow knowledge and experience, ideally CSA certified • ITIL V4 or V3 practitioner qualifications • Service Design qualifications • Experience in leading one or more IT Service Management processes Alcor Solutions does not anticipate providing sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H-1B or TN status) for this employment position.