Duties & Responsibilities

The Functional Service Manager is accountable for one or more functional elements (e.g. an activity, or an application) within the organizational structure.

This accountability includes that the Functional Service Manager assures that their functional elements are defined and documented in terms of functionality, scope, quality and costs in agreement with the service owners that represent customer services which depend on these functional elements (So called Operational Level Agreement's or OLA's).

The Functional Service Manager is responsible for the support infrastructure, and assures service targets can be met. In particular he manages the 2nd (and optional 3rd line) support groups. In case of outsourced support levels he does not directly manage the people in the groups but still monitor their activity.

The Functional Service Manager makes sure that assurance and continual improvement of service quality is in place, in collaboration with relevant Service Owners.

Tasks

The following tasks are assigned to the role of a Functional Service Manager:

• Represents the Functional Service towards the Service Owners across the organization
• Ensuring the descriptions in the Service Catalogue of applicable Functional Elements are accurate and kept up-to-date
• Ensuring continual communication with Service Owners
• Ensuring Support Groups are in place, staffed and able to fulfil the OLA's
• Ensures that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve the service is identified, developed and refined
• Ensures that resources are effectively trained and deployed to deliver and support the service
• Serving as a point of escalation (notification) for the Support Groups under their responsibility
• Ensuring participation in internal and external review meetings
• Supporting negotiations of OLAs (Operational Level Agreements)
• Organising and overseeing continual improvement activities and management of changes affecting the fuction
• Ensuring that the entry in the Risk Register of applicable Functional Elements are accurate and kept up-to-date

Skills, Experience & Knowledge

For a successful fulfilment of this role the the following skill set is recommended:

• High level of technical knowledge of the functional domain(s) (activities, applications, functions, provided by the functional elements under his responsibility).
• Deep understanding of technical and functional dependencies.
• Knowlegde and understanding of how functions serve the organization to implement customer services.
• Communication skills to ensure long-term good relationship with representatives of the service organization.
• Experience in organizing and managing support teams.

Assignment

The Functional Service Manager role should be assigned once per functional service. A person can however be Functional Service Manager of more than one service. The assignment of one or more Deputies is highly recommended.