Transition Practice Manager

Why we're hiring:

At WPP, technology is at the heart of everything we do, and it is WPP IT's mission to enable everyone to collaborate, create and thrive. WPP IT is undergoing a significant transformation to modernise ways of working, shift to cloud and micro-service-based architectures, drive automation, digitise colleague and client experiences and deliver insight from WPP's petabytes of data.

As we progress on this journey, we need to a Global Service Transition practice manager who will report to the Global Service Strategy & Design lead, providing best-practice guidance for the service transition stage of the service management lifecycle across WPP IT. This is a senior role, and we are looking for an experienced ITIL certified Service Transition Lead to work in WPP IT Service Management. You will manage the Global Service transition practice and be responsible for coordination of transition assurance for WPP IT's pipeline of strategic initiatives.

As well as being hands on, you will be managing a team who ensure that the requirements developed in service design are effectively realized in live operation while controlling the risks of failure and subsequent disruption. You will also need to assure service retirement and transfer of services between service providers.

What you'll be doing:

• Managing and developing the Service Transition team with high performance and excellence in mind.
• Developing and improving capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into supported environments, building, acceptance into service, validation testing, evaluation and deployment.
• Working closely with peers, Projects and Programmes, support and coordinate initiatives through the ITSM lifecycle.
• Managing risks relating to new, changed or retired services allowing for innovation while minimizing the unintended consequences of change.
• Introducing new services and successfully deploying service releases into supported environments.
• Decommissioning and discontinuation of services, infrastructure components and applications.
• You will be responsible for driving continual service improvement across all aspects of Service Transition.
• You will be responsible for maturing service transition processes in support of the ITSM lifecycle and clearly defining the interfaces (integration) between these processes and other processes outside of service transition.

What you'll need:

• Strong Customer Service Management experience and skills.
• Service Transition and/or ITIL Lifecycle Continual Service Improvement.
• Six Sigma experience desirable.
• Agile experience in a CLOUD environment.
• Relevant Continual Service Improvement (CSI) experience.
• Strong Change, Release and Service Asset & Configuration Management experience
• Strong Supplier and Stakeholder management skills
• Strong communication, influencing and analytical skills
• Working knowledge and understanding of Service Delivery as a whole.
• Proven leadership and people skills in a global setting.
• Good technology insight with a full appreciation of how technology can enable positive business change

Who you are:

You're open:We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are accepting: of new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: we are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people We promote a culture of people that do extraordinary work.

Scale and opportunity We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers. Are you up for the challenge