Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Head of IT Service Management

🎯 Role Definition

The Head of IT Service Management leads the enterprise ITSM strategy and execution to ensure reliable, efficient, and customer-centric IT service delivery. This role owns the end-to-end service lifecycle (strategy, design, transition, operation, continual improvement), governance, and performance of incident, problem, change, release, request, and service-level management across multi-cloud and on-premise environments. The leader partners with technology, business stakeholders, security, vendors, and operations teams to optimize cost, risk, and value of IT services while driving digital transformation and automation.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

IT Service Manager / Service Delivery Manager
IT Operations Manager / Infrastructure Manager
Change & Release Manager or Senior ITIL Process Owner

Advancement To:

VP / Director of IT Operations
Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Global Head of IT Services & Digital Transformation

Lateral Moves:

Head of Customer Experience (Digital Services)
Head of IT Governance, Risk & Compliance
Head of Cloud Operations / SRE Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Define and own the enterprise ITSM strategy, roadmap and operating model aligned to corporate strategy, ensuring IT services are designed, delivered and improved to meet business objectives and customer experience goals.
Lead design and continuous improvement of end-to-end service lifecycle processes (incident, problem, change, release, request, configuration, capacity, availability and service catalogue) using ITIL best practices and modern frameworks (ITIL 4, COBIT).
Build and run a high-performing ITSM organization including Service Desk, Service Operations, Process Owners, and Continual Service Improvement teams; recruit, coach and develop managers and practitioners.
Establish and drive measurable Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Operational Level Agreements (OLAs), and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for all critical services; institute effective reporting, dashboards and SLA breach remediation processes.
Own enterprise incident management and major incident response: define escalation pathways, chair major incident reviews, coordinate cross-functional war-rooms and ensure timely communication and post-incident RCA and remediation plans.
Operate and evolve the ITSM toolset (e.g., ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Cherwell) including implementation roadmaps, optimizations, integrations with ITOM, CMDB, monitoring, and automation platforms to reduce manual work and improve MTTR.
Manage change advisory board (CAB) governance and change management frameworks to balance change velocity with risk control, including emergency and standard change processes for hybrid cloud estates.
Lead problem management and root cause analysis programs to reduce repeat incidents, drive permanent fixes, and quantify business impact and cost avoidance from improvement initiatives.
Partner with Security, Risk & Compliance to embed operational security and compliance controls into service delivery, support audits (ISO 20000, SOC, GDPR) and ensure remediation of operational findings.
Drive service catalogue and demand management: define service offerings, costing/pricing models, entitlement rules and onboarding/offboarding processes to create a coherent consumer-facing catalogue.
Align ITSM activities to DevOps, SRE and Cloud teams to enable reliable deployments, observability, incident prevention and automated remediation across CI/CD pipelines and production environments.
Own third-party vendor management for outsourced service desk, hosting and managed services: define contracts, SLAs, governance cadence, performance reviews and cost optimization.
Establish a culture of continual service improvement (CSI): run CSI registers, prioritize improvement backlog, sponsor Kaizen/Lean initiatives and track ROI of service improvements.
Define capacity, availability and continuity planning processes including DR plans, resilience requirements and periodic business continuity testing to ensure service availability targets.
Create and manage the ITSM budget: forecast operating costs, capital investments for tooling and service improvements, and deliver cost vs value trade-offs to senior leadership.
Lead cross-functional programs to modernize service management (automation, self-service portals, AI/ML chatbots, knowledge management) and drive adoption through change management and training.
Oversee configuration management and CMDB accuracy programs: ensure configuration items are defined, reconciled and integrated with discovery, monitoring and incident processes to speed resolution.
Drive customer experience metrics, run regular stakeholder governance forums, and translate business feedback into prioritized service improvements and productized service offerings.
Create rigorous reporting and analytics capability to measure service health, operational trends, customer satisfaction (CSAT), NPS, cost per ticket and other business-relevant metrics.
Serve as the escalation point for high-impact incidents and cross-domain service failures, coordinating remediation, executive communications, and customer notifications.
Ensure ITSM policies, procedures and knowledge base are current, accessible and enforced across global operations and are part of employee onboarding and certification programs.

Secondary Functions

Lead pilot projects for AI-assisted incident triage, automated remediation playbooks and self-service expansions to reduce time-to-resolution and operational cost.
Support ad-hoc executive data requests, prepare board-level reports on service health, risk and operational readiness for major launches or M&A activity.
Collaborate with enterprise architecture and product management to translate business requirements into resilient service designs and operational requirements.
Participate in agile transformation and sprint planning with platform and operations teams to incrementally deliver ITSM enhancements and automation.
Run cross-functional tabletop exercises and post-incident learning sessions to improve readiness, communications and tooling.
Support procurement and evaluation of new ITSM, monitoring, and observability products including vendor selection, POC orchestration and TCO modeling.
Mentor and build capability within teams through certifications (ITIL, ServiceNow admin/developer, SRE fundamentals) and structured career paths.
Provide subject-matter expertise for regulatory and audit engagements, ensuring operational controls map to compliance requirements and remediation timelines.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Deep expertise in IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks and practices including ITIL v3/v4, COBIT, and ISO/IEC 20000.
Proven experience implementing and operating enterprise ITSM platforms (ServiceNow strongly preferred; alternative experience with BMC Remedy, Cherwell, Freshservice).
Incident, Major Incident and Problem Management mastery with demonstrated reductions in MTTR and repeat incidents through root cause remediation.
Change & Release management governance for hybrid cloud environments and modern CI/CD workflows.
Strong CMDB and configuration management knowledge with hands-on experience integrating discovery tools, monitoring and ITOM processes.
Service Level Management: defining, negotiating, tracking and reporting SLAs, OLAs and underpinning contracts with vendors.
Automation and orchestration experience (PowerShell, Python, Ansible, Orchestration modules in ServiceNow, or other automation tools).
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and operational implications for service delivery, scalability and resilience.
Data-driven reporting and analytics capabilities: experience with dashboards (Power BI, Tableau), KPI design and operational metrics analysis.
Vendor & contract management skills including SOW development, performance SLAs, vendor scorecards and cost optimization.
Security operations integration: understanding of how incident response, patching, vulnerability management and security monitoring intersect with ITSM.
Budgeting, financial management and business case development for ITSM investments and transformation programs.
Knowledge of digital experience tooling and self-service technologies: chatbots, knowledge management systems, portal UX and automation for end-user empowerment.
Change leadership in large, matrixed organizations with experience driving adoption of service management processes and tooling globally.

Soft Skills

Strategic leadership and vision: ability to translate business strategy into a practical ITSM roadmap and measurable outcomes.
Stakeholder management and executive communication: excels at presenting complex operational topics to C-level and business leaders.
Strong coaching and people management skills: builds, mentors and retains high-performing teams with clear career pathways.
Influencing and negotiation skills: effective in aligning cross-functional teams and third-party suppliers without direct authority.
Problem solving and analytical thinking: structured approach to root cause analysis and prioritization of improvement initiatives.
Change management and organizational transformational aptitude to drive cultural adoption of new ways of working.
Customer-focused mindset and empathy: balances technical excellence with service quality and user experience.
Resilience and crisis management: calm under pressure with proven experience leading through major incidents and outages.
Collaboration and facilitation: runs CABs, steering committees and cross-functional workshops to achieve consensus and action.
Continuous improvement mindset with a bias for measurable outcomes and operational excellence.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree (MSc, MBA) in Technology Management, Business Administration or equivalent executive education.
Professional certifications: ITIL 4 Expert / Managing Professional, ServiceNow Certified Implementation Specialist / Administrator, PMP, Lean Six Sigma.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Technology / Information Systems
Business Administration / Management
Cybersecurity / Risk Management
Service Operations / IT Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 10–15+ years in IT operations, service management or related functions, with progressive leadership responsibility.

Preferred: 12+ years with at least 5 years leading enterprise ITSM or global service delivery organizations, demonstrated track record of ServiceNow or equivalent ITSM tool implementations, ITIL-driven transformations, and measurable operational improvements.