Page 88 - ITIL® Foundation 3.15

The Generic Service Owner
To provide the level of attention and focus required, a single point of accountability is required. The service owner is accountable for the delivery of a specific IT service regardless of where the underlying technology components, processes or professional capabilities reside. The service owner is responsible to the customer for the initiation, transition and ongoing maintenance and support of a particular service and accountable to the IT director or service management director for the delivery of the service.
Service ownership is as critical to service management as establishing ownership for processes which cross multiple vertical silos or departments. It is possible that a single person may fulfill the service owner role for more than one service.
The service owner vs. the process owner
Although both titles have the word owner in them, the service owner and the process owner are very different. Each of these is tasked with different accountabilities. Each process owner cares only about their specific process. Each service owner cares only about their specific service.
By measuring each of their roles independently, the service provider gains the opportunity to identify the cost and effectiveness of the process or service independent of each other. If a service owner is unhappy with how a process has performed in relation to supporting their service, then they would contact the CSI manager assess the metrics of the process owner and advise the accountable party on improvements.
Both the process owner and the service owner are equal in the organizational hierarchy.
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