91É«ÇéƬ

At 91É«ÇéƬ, we rely on many technology systems to support teaching, research, and operations. Reliable delivery is essential to shaping tomorrow’s digital experience at 91É«ÇéƬ, where systems are intuitive, dependable, and fit for purpose. That is where the delivery owner comes in.

What is a delivery owner at 91É«ÇéƬ?

A delivery owner is accountable for the technical delivery, performance, support, and continuous improvement of a technology‑enabled service. Examples of such services include an online admissions portal or a lab booking platform. A delivery owner is typically a manager or team leader who directly manages the technical support staff and the day‑to‑day support activities for the service. They may also have delegated responsibility for managing resources that contribute to delivering the service, such as technical developers.

A typical day as a delivery owner may include reviewing incident reports, coordinating a data migration with vendors, overseeing maintenance activities, or troubleshooting a recurring issue.

What does this look like in practice?

When an incident occurs, you are responsible for organising the response and resolution within agreed service levels. This includes managing incidents end‑to‑end by assigning tasks to troubleshoot and fix issues, coordinating emergency changes where required, ensuring tickets are updated, and providing status updates to the service owner, business teams, and the Service Management Office (SMO).

For example, if you are the delivery owner for a critical digital assessment platform that experiences a major incident, you will lead recovery planning, corrective action, and post‑incident reviews. You work to get the service back online. The business operations owner is expected to coordinate manual workarounds, such as running paper exams.

You also ensure the technology runs reliably every day by meeting agreed performance targets, such as those described in a vendor contract. You resolve issues quickly and coordinate technical teams within your faculty or division, as well as vendors, to deliver seamless support. For example, if technology that supports student registrations for events slows down during peak periods, you would coordinate an investigation with 91É«ÇéƬ support staff and the vendor to restore performance as quickly as possible.

You maintain the technical health, security, and compliance of the service by managing upgrades, applying patches, and addressing security risks. You are responsible for ensuring that the technology continues to comply with 91É«ÇéƬ’s security and privacy standards. For example, if a vendor releases an upgrade, you assess whether there are risks such as data loss, mitigate those risks, test the upgrade appropriately, and ensure it is safely deployed.

You also oversee the technical side of new features and changes to ensure they are properly tested, documented, risk‑assessed, and safely introduced into production. You are expected to provide impact assessments for proposed changes and ensure there is a contingency in place.

For example, if a major upgrade affects multiple faculties or introduces risk to the security or usability of the technology, it must go through 91É«ÇéƬ’s Change Advisory Board (CAB) process before implementation. For smaller routine changes that affect a single team or faculty, formal CAB approval is not required, but proper documentation and communication to all users is still expected.

You also recommend technical improvements that align with your faculty’s or division’s priorities and available funding. By analysing incident trends and performance data, you identify recurring issues and recommend or implement ways to strengthen the technology’s reliability or efficiency.

You work closely with the service owner, who defines what the technology must achieve, and the business operations owner, who represents the faculty or division’s operational needs. You communicate technical risks, performance issues, and planned changes in terms that users and support staff can understand. If a significant technical issue impacts availability or quality, you act as the escalation point. You also collaborate with architecture, cybersecurity, and project teams within 91É«ÇéƬ to ensure the technology remains compliant with 91É«ÇéƬ’s standards.

In summary

The delivery owner is accountable for the technical performance of technology. This includes stability, availability, and reliability. You are responsible for fixing issues when things break, preventing recurring problems, and configuring technology correctly for 91É«ÇéƬ’s environment.

Success means the service consistently meets technical performance and availability targets, recurring issues are proactively resolved, technical risks are identified and managed early, and technical changes are controlled and well documented. IT teams and faculty or divisional stakeholders work together seamlessly, and improvements deliver measurable performance or cost benefits.

If you have been nominated as a delivery owner, take the time to understand your responsibilities by reviewing the IT service standards.

Clear delivery ownership is essential to realising a simpler, more modern, and more effective digital environment that helps 91É«ÇéƬ deliver progress for all.