• Own and maintain the service transition framework, governance model, standards, and operating procedures.
• Define operational readiness requirements for new and changed services.
• Establish service transition checkpoints, decision gates, and approval criteria.
• Ensure service transition is embedded into project, change, release, and operational governance.
• Provide senior oversight of production service introductions and operational acceptance decisions.
• Act as the escalation point for transition risks, readiness gaps, and unresolved handover issues.

2. Operational Readiness Assurance

Ensure services are fully prepared for live operation before deployment.

• Define and maintain operational acceptance criteria across people, process, technology, supplier, risk, and support dimensions.
• Assess readiness across support models, monitoring, alerting, documentation, ownership, knowledge, access, reporting, and escalation paths.
• Ensure operational teams are ready, trained, and equipped to support the service from day one.
• Validate that service desk, resolver groups, suppliers, and service owners understand support responsibilities.
• Confirm critical operational controls are in place before go-live.
• Challenge go-live decisions where readiness is incomplete or service risk is unacceptable.

3. Transition Planning and Cross-Functional Coordination

Lead transition planning across complex technology and operational environments.

• Develop and maintain transition plans for major projects, services, platforms, and supplier changes.
• Coordinate transition activities across project teams, operational teams, suppliers, and business stakeholders.
• Identify transition dependencies, risks, owners, milestones, and acceptance actions.
• Facilitate transition governance forums and readiness reviews.
• Provide clear reporting on readiness status, outstanding actions, risks, and decisions required.
• Ensure transition activities are aligned with change, release, service design, and operational planning.

4. Knowledge Transfer and Operational Acceptance

Ensure operational teams receive the knowledge, documentation, and capability required to support services effectively.

• Govern knowledge transfer from delivery teams, engineering teams, suppliers, and project teams into live operations.
• Ensure support documentation, runbooks, knowledge articles, escalation paths, and operational procedures are complete and usable.
• Coordinate training and walkthroughs for service desk, resolver groups, support teams, and suppliers.
• Ensure formal operational acceptance is completed before services move into production.
• Maintain evidence of handover, training, acceptance, and outstanding support risks.
• Ensure lessons from early life support are captured and used to improve future transitions.

5. Early Life Support and Post Go-Live Stabilisation

Ensure services remain stable during the critical post-deployment period.

• Define early life support requirements, ownership, duration, success criteria, and exit conditions.
• Coordinate post go-live support arrangements across project, supplier, and operational teams.
• Monitor incidents, user feedback, service performance, known errors, and operational defects after launch.
• Ensure unresolved issues are tracked, prioritised, and owned through to closure.
• Facilitate transition closure reviews and confirm readiness for steady-state support.
• Escalate service instability or poor support outcomes where corrective action is required.

6. Risk Management and Service Protection

Protect service stability by ensuring transition risks are visible, assessed, and actively managed.

• Identify operational risks associated with service introduction, supplier transition, technical change, and support readiness.
• Maintain transition risk logs, action plans, and decision records.
• Escalate unacceptable readiness gaps or unmanaged operational risks to senior stakeholders.
• Support go/no-go decisions with clear evidence and risk-based recommendations.
• Ensure transition risks are linked to wider operational, service, supplier, and business risks where appropriate.
• Prevent services entering production without appropriate support, recovery, monitoring, and ownership arrangements.

7. Continual Improvement and Transition Maturity

Build strong relationships across the organisation to drive process adoption.

• Conduct post-transition reviews and identify recurring themes, weaknesses, and improvement opportunities.
• Define and maintain a service transition improvement roadmap.
• Improve transition templates, checklists, governance reporting, and readiness assessment methods.
• Promote standardisation, automation, and repeatability across service introduction activities.
• Use transition outcomes, incidents, audit findings, and stakeholder feedback to improve the process.
• Provide maturity reporting and recommendations to IT leadership.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the service transition framework, standards, governance, and improvement roadmap.
• Ensure new and changed services meet operational readiness and acceptance criteria before go-live.
• Coordinate transition activities across project, engineering, supplier, service owner, and operational support teams.
• Lead readiness reviews, transition governance forums, and operational acceptance decisions.
• Govern knowledge transfer, support documentation, training, and handover activities.
• Ensure early life support is planned, governed, monitored, and formally closed.
• Maintain visibility of transition risks, unresolved actions, readiness gaps, and decision points.
• Support go/no-go decisions with clear evidence and practical risk recommendations.
• Provide executive reporting on transition readiness, service risk, and post go-live stability.
• Drive continual improvement of service transition maturity, standards, and ways of working.
• Partner with IT service management, delivery, engineering, architecture, cybersecurity, suppliers, and business stakeholders.

Key Deliverables

• Service Transition Framework.
• Operational Readiness Assessment Model.
• Operational Acceptance Criteria.
• Service Introduction Checklist.
• Transition Governance Reporting.
• Transition Risk and Action Register.
• Knowledge Transfer and Training Plans.
• Service Handover Documentation.
• Support Readiness Reports.
• Early Life Support Plan and Exit Report.
• Service Acceptance Records.
• Post-transition Review Reports.
• Transition Performance Metrics.
• Continual Improvement

Required Experience

• Leading service transition, service introduction, operational readiness, or production acceptance activities in a large or complex organisation.
• Supporting complex programmes, technology transformations, platform deployments, supplier transitions, or operational change initiatives.
• Managing service introductions into global operational environments.
• Working across IT service management, operations, project delivery, engineering, support, supplier, and business stakeholder groups.
• Developing transition governance frameworks, operational acceptance criteria, and readiness assessment models.
• Managing operational risks, readiness gaps, service handover issues, and post go-live stabilisation activities.
• Coordinating knowledge transfer, support documentation, service desk readiness, and resolver group onboarding.
• Producing senior-level reporting on transition status, risk, readiness, and improvement activity.
• Working within ITIL-based service management and change governance environments.
• Driving continual improvement of service transition processes and operational supportability.

Required Skills and Capabilities

• Worked extensively in a global organization where you have been fully accountable for the transition framework and outcomes.
• Strong understanding of service transition, operational readiness, and service acceptance principles.
• Strong IT service management and operational governance knowledge.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and facilitation skills.
• Ability to influence and challenge delivery teams, suppliers, and senior stakeholders.
• Strong risk management and service protection mindset.
• Excellent planning, coordination, and dependency management capability.
• Ability to translate complex technical and operational detail into clear executive insight.
• Strong documentation, reporting, and governance discipline.
• Supplier management and third-party coordination experience.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making capability.
• Ability to operate confidently across both strategic and operational levels.
• Continuous improvement mindset focused on improving stability, supportability, and employee experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• ITIL Foundation or higher.
• PRINCE2, PMP, Agile, Scrum, or equivalent project management qualification.
• Lean, Six Sigma, or continuous improvement certification.
• ServiceNow experience or equivalent ITSM platform experience.
• Experience with service design, change enablement, release management, or operational resilience.
• Experience operating in a global enterprise environment.