India - Release and Transition Manager

About Inchcape Shipping Services

At Inchcape, our vision is to have a connected world, in which our customers trade successfully and make better decisions in every port, everywhere. We use technology and our global network to help our partners connect to a smoother, smarter ocean.

Inchcape combines its worldwide infrastructure with local expertise through our global network of over 250 proprietary offices, across 70 countries and a team of more than 3,000 committed professionals. Our diverse global customer base includes owners and charterers in the oil, cruise, container, and bulk commodity sectors as well as naval, government and intergovernmental organizations.

We have an ambitious growth model and a career here is certainly going to be a rewarding one that will allow you to bring your skills & experience. We embrace change and are open to new thinking and pushing for positive change in our industry.

Main Purpose of Job

The Release and Transition Manager will have responsibility for the release and transition process for solutions being developed either in-house or third-party into production. The Release and Transition Manager is required to facilitate all Production releases for our Core products and any transition of all aspects of service change deriving from products delivered by IT, from the stage where a project is owned fully by a project team, through transition, to service management, where business-as-usual support services are delivered by the support groups.

The Release and Transition Manager is responsible for ensuring that the impact of every element of the life cycle of developmental change is considered, from the time a project is confirmed to its eventual deployment, involving co-ordination of the processes of operational level acceptance, transition planning, support requirements definition, configuration and change management, performance and risk evaluation, test management, release, deployment, early life support and release review.

The Release and Transition Manager position is within the Service Management Team, and will work closely with the product, projects teams, service owners, the first line and second line support managers and teams, change management and the infrastructure teams. The post holder will be required to have well developed presentation and influencing skills and be capable of making the case for and achieving effective service Release and Transition deliverables in Product/Project environments where delivery timescales may be inflexible.

Key Accountabilities

• Responsible for Co-ordination of all production release activity for Inchcape’s core products
• Responsible for the co-ordination and communication activities across stakeholders, projects, developers, suppliers and service teams internal and external
• Ensure that all stakeholders internally are fully conversant with service acceptance and engagement

• Plan and manage service changes efficiently and effectively.
• Manage risks relating to new, changed or retired services.
• Successfully deploy service releases into supported environments.
• Set correct expectations on the performance and use of new or changed services.
• Ensure that service changes create the expected business value.
• Provide good-quality knowledge and information about services and service assets.
• Manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and performance targets.
• Analyse and assess impact and develop and document change requests.

• Implement changes based on requests for change.
• Improve current processes in Release and Transition to aid in operational efficiency

Key Deliverables

• Plan and Manage core Product releases into the live production environment
• Plan and manage capacity and resources required to manage service transitions.
• Implement a rigorous framework for evaluating service and support team capabilities and risk profiles before new or changed services are deployed.
• Provide efficient repeatable mechanisms for building, testing and deploying services and releases.
• Ensure that services can be managed, operated and supported in accordance with constraints specified during the service design stage of the service lifecycle.
• Develop and implement plans for go-live, early-life support and service acceptance.
• Ensure that the acceptance criteria are understood by the wider IT operations.
• Manage service components to ensure they meet business needs and performance targets.
• Contribute to the implementation of remedies and preventative measures.
• Investigate problems in systems, processes and services, with an understanding of the level of a problem (for example, strategic, tactical or operational)
• Identify process optimisation opportunities with guidance and contribute to the implementation of proposed solutions.

Knowledge, Experience & Skills

Essential

• Minimum of five years’ experience working in an IT service environment within a complex and diverse organisation
• Minimum three years’ working in a service environment where ITIL service release transition principles and processes are implemented.
• Have demonstrable experience and aptitude in working in a matrix organisation where effective and robust negotiating and influencing skills are used successfully while maintaining good working relationships with members of that organisation.
• Sufficient technical background to understand the different architectures of the core systems, and to understand the impact of new technologies; experience of enterprise level applications will be an advantage.
• Proven track record of successfully managing their own work and that of others where required, including the ability to plan, prioritise and organise work to meet tight deadlines.
• Proven track record of working independently and showing persistence, while fostering good working relationships across teams, as well as contributing to the SMO team environment
• Strong interpersonal skills and politically astute
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to relate effectively to users at all levels and careful attention to detail.
• Experience of creating and maintaining a project plan
• Excellent analysis and problem-solving skills

Desirable

• Knowledge of shipping / port agency domain
• Experience in global organisation and services
• IT partner / vendor management
• Experience in large Transformations

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