Service Design and Transition Manager - (7775)

Fixed Term Contracts (x2) for 2 years

These are two exciting opportunities to join a growing Service Management team within a transforming IT & Digital (IT&D) Directorate!

As IT&D, we help to create the University of the future by co-designing new ways of working, enhancing productivity, reducing complexity, supporting innovation, and providing the insights to drive continual improvement. Embracing a digital future in an evolving modern university, you will be working in partnership with our academic and Professional Services colleagues to deliver digital services that help the University achieve its strategic objectives in teaching and research, nationally & globally.

As part of Service Management, the Service Design & Transition Manager will enable significant organisational and technology change through assuring and enabling the introduction of a range of strategic projects and programmes. These include the introduction of a brand-new app to provide a unified mobile experience for students, significant modernisation of our infrastructure, a new digital research and high-performance computing platform, robotic process automation, enhancing our data and analytics capability, and the replacement of our enterprise service management platform. The Service Design & Transition Manager(s) are critical in managing the complexity and demands of these transitions.

Reporting to the Head of IT Service Delivery, you will be a member of the Service Delivery team and will work closely with Architecture, Engineering, Development, and Project Management Office teams – as well as other Service Management colleagues and business stakeholders across ManMet. This is a great opportunity to learn about University operations, and higher education in general, and you will work closely with a diverse range of stakeholders at all levels of the organisation.  

It is an exciting phase to join the organisation at a time of transformation, and you will play a key role in helping us realise our service excellence ambitions, drive digital transformation, and embrace a digital future in a great modern university.  

As the Service Design & Transition Manager, you will:

Service Design

• Ensure solutions, technologies and support processes are designed to be transitioned and operated, whilst supporting business change in designing service blueprints and customer journey maps as tools for designing effective services.
• Drive adoption of key service management processes, including Incident Management, Request Fulfilment, Knowledge Management, Change Management, and Configuration Management.

Service Transition

• Build and manage successful relationships with key business stakeholders, the Project Management Office, and a wide range of operational teams including the Service Desk, to ensure projects have the correct level of service assurance and complete service acceptance fully and efficiently.
• Provide guidance and support to projects in scoping and delivering end to end transition activities, and build and own project service transition and ELS (Early Life Support) plans, ensuring the successful transition into operations.

Service Architecture

• Work with colleagues across projects and programmes to ensure all service elements fit in with existing ‘plug and play' service architecture and ensure technical solutions align to service and delivery principles.

The ideal candidate will:

• Possess strong service design and transition experience, inclusive of end-to-end customer journey mapping, and service blueprint knowledge. Additionally, they will also have a firm understanding of how technology, process and people collectively work together as part of designing high quality end-to-end services. 
• Have a passion for IT service management, customer service and continual service improvement.  
• Be a strong advocate for adopting best practice, enabling innovation and have experience of supporting significant organisational change from a service management perspective and at pace.  
• Excel at facilitating discussions, understanding and challenging different perspectives, working collaboratively across a diverse range of teams. 

(For a full list of essential and desirable criteria please refer to the JD and Candidate Pack)

To apply for this role, please provide your CV along with a cover letter highlighting your experience in IT service design and transition. 

For informal queries about the role, please contact Lynette Daniels on l.daniels@mmu.ac.uk 

Due to the volume of applications we receive, we sometimes close our vacancies early. It is therefore advisable to apply as early as possible if you would like to be considered for a role.

Manchester Met University is committed to creating an intentionally inclusive culture of belonging that promotes equity and celebrates diversity. We understand the importance of having a diverse workforce and the benefits it can bring to ensuring diversity of thought and innovation in everything we do. We, therefore, encourage applications from people from ethnic minority groups, disabled people and people who identify as LGBTQIA+.