The Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a well-known subject that is part of your daily life, but everything can be improved, right? After all, it is essential to reduce the resolution time of unexpected issues and ensure the proper functioning of applications.
However, it is of little use to pass on basic tips that are probably already adopted in your company. Therefore, in this material, we seek to present the best practices in the sector, according to ITIL (Infrastructure Technology Information Library).
Thus, the SLA can truly make a difference in your team and ensure a more fluid workflow. Likewise, this is the way to ensure an agreement based on clear language, in which the services to be delivered and performance measurement are well determined.
Summary
1. What is the importance of SLAs
Understand the importance of this document described in ABNT for the formalization of services.2. How to define SLAs?
We created a step-by-step guide for you to define the Service Level Agreement.3. How to measure it?
Main best practice tips to further improve your performance management.4. How to optimize it?
To ensure even better results, we mention some points that must be considered in the SLA.
So, how about diving deeper into the subject? Enjoy your reading!
The SLA is the document in which the services to be provided by any IT contractual relationship are formalized. It is a document described in ABNT NBR ISO-IEC 20000-1 and must be reviewed periodically for greater effectiveness. The scope may involve different approaches, ranging from performance expectations to support and problem triage.
Any IT team works with these parameters, but due relevance is not always given. Its objective is to guarantee maximum transparency and productivity, as well as to present the losses that can occur without these aspects. Therefore, ideally, SLAs should indicate exactly what must be done when any unforeseen event arises.
According to ITIL, the service level agreement is “a commitment between the IT service provider and the customer. The SLA describes the IT services, documents service level targets, and specifies the responsibilities of the supplier and the customer. A single SLA may cover multiple IT services or multiple customers”.
The purpose is for suppliers and customers to have few questions. Thus, it is possible to achieve the two types of values provided by this approach. On one hand, the contractor is secure in emergency situations or in case of updates to the Operating System, Hardware, etc. On the other hand, the supplier knows which services must be provided and within what deadlines.
Due to these characteristics, the SLA offers several advantages, such as:
- Transparency in the Customer-Supplier Relationship;
- Clarity of supplier responsibilities;
- Credibility in the relationship with the customer;
- Greater security in the quality of the service executed by the supplier;
- Reduction of conflicts between customer and supplier;
- Increase in the efficiency of the services provided;
- Reduction in downtime levels;
With these practices, your team increases its commitment to the customer and ensures a greater focus on the necessary requirements and meeting demands. Similarly, the SLA contributes to the identification of customer service performance indicators. From these, it is easier to understand how to integrate them to adopt an improvement process.
In short, ignoring the SLA can be a huge mistake. The ideal is to keep it up to date and in accordance with the ISO/IEC 20000-1 standard, which determines the best practices for the sector along with ITIL. This is how the IT team will be able to mature its processes and fulfill the signed agreement with excellence.
Keep in mind that the predefined roadmap offers protection against undue charges and excesses. This is the main prerogative for defining the SLA, a subject we will see next.
2. How to define the SLA?
SLAs must be created and reviewed whenever there is any modification or service launch, thus ensuring continuity.
How to reach this level? The answer lies in following the step-by-step guide we have listed. Check it out!
2.1. Create separate SLAs for each service to be measured
The Service Level Agreement must be seen as “promises made to the customer”. Therefore, it is necessary to have different SLAs for each service. This avoids work overload and potential delays in more complex services.
Given this scope, you can determine agreements as follows:
The creation of a new user will be done one day after receiving the request form;
Access cancellations will be pro
cessed on the last day;
Requests for new equipment will be delivered within a week.
Notice that each service must have its lead time and approval schedule. Thus, the service catalog must contextualize what will be performed, including exclusions. Also remember the Stop SLA, which occurs in cases that are under the care of customer support. One final recommendation is to talk in order to determine deadlines based on business focus.
In this scenario, it is important to explain that not all problems are capable of quick resolution, and that not everything is critical. It is necessary to have well-established priorities to know what is truly urgent.
2.2. Define priorities
Priorities must be delimited based on business impact and demand urgency. This measure is essential to reduce areas of conflict and indicate to the customer what can be done with the available budget.
In addition, this step helps define the types of activity and their priorities. In the first case, it is possible to determine: existence of incident, question, and service request. In the second, the options are: critical, high, medium, and low. With this clarity, it becomes easier to define which SLA is best for each situation.
Notice that the priority of the event must consider the impact on the business and users. Urgency, on the other hand, is the speed with which the solution is needed. Given this scenario, we will know that:
2.3. Generate a process improvement infrastructure
This step includes different activities, such as:
- Definition of business goals to improve ITSM processes;
- Choice of an improvement target;
- Identification of stakeholders participating in the process.
From this, form a team to lead the implementation of SLAs. Among their activities are:
- Analysis of the current state;
- Identification of inventory and software tools used for monitoring, capacity planning, service and performance management, etc.;
- Data collection from capacity management work;
- Conducting a gap assessment to detect sectors that require training, process, or software improvements.
Given these changes, create a plan that meets the detected needs.
2.4. Draw up the planning
The implementation plan must cover the following aspects:
- Establish the 3 main capacity management factors, that is, processes, people, and tools;
- Survey the necessary costs and outline an initial budget;
- Determine the role of the IT manager and to whom they must report;
- Describe the service flow and include work processes, inputs, and outputs;
- Allocate human resources and have time to train them;
- Identify any work required to acquire, consolidate, or implement capacity and performance tools.
2.5. Determine roles and responsibilities
This stage encompasses several steps. The first is the understanding that both supplier and customer are responsible for fulfilling certain duties. It is through this joint work that contact channels with the service desk and response times will be determined.
Responsibilities must also be detailed alongside the scope of activities to be provided. This information facilitates communication and therefore helps reduce conflicts during the contract.
In this scenario, it is also essential to define reporting and critical service review. These evaluations are fundamental to ensuring continuous improvement and identifying delivery failures, as well as new opportunities.
Finally, it is important to have an ombudsman channel so that the customer can make complaints and be prepared for complex problems. In this second case, create a business continuity plan to overcome obstacles.
By following these tips, you will be able to properly define the SLA and ensure its compliance. However, you still need to know how to measure it to have the opportunity for continuous improvement. This is what we will cover next.
3. How to measure it?
The SLA requires good performance management to ensure its continuous enhancement. This measure requires carrying out several steps, which enable its appropriate measurement. To this end, we bring some best practices to be adopted. Shall we?
3.1. Identify metrics
Team performance must be measured through indicators, which will point out the necessary adjustments. To be efficient, grounding in quantitative and relevant data is fundamental.
Thus, SLAs must reflect the knowledge necessary to provide the service and be improved based on previous experiences. Alongside this, testing and prototyping should be carried out, as well as continuous review.
3.2. Adopt SMART goals
SMART goals represent SLAs well. For this, they need to be:
- Specific (S): must be well detailed to determine expectations for service delivery;
- Measurable (M): need to allow tracking of actual performance compared to the promised SLA. The ideal is to use management tools that include SLA goals and the time spent delivering service catalog items;
- Achievable (A): it is necessary that the SLA is capable of being fulfilled, since unrealistic goals demotivate the team;
- Relevant (R): must be related to the service to be provided, which is important for analyzing performance against the objective;
- Time-bound (T): must have a deadline, so that data and performance reports can be collected.
By following these guidelines, SLA metrics will be clearer and, thus, it will be easier to determine if the service is being performed properly and which aspects can be improved.
3.3. Obtain a baseline and set objectives
Measuring the service over a period of time allows you to find out which goals are realistic. After that, it is necessary to conduct a review to check the results of the service provision. Together with the customer, establish what the minimum service levels are. They must be the reference, since falling below them means harming the business.
Now that you have seen how to define and measure SLAs, you are ready to review what you already have in your team. Keep in mind that the baseline is a previously agreed-upon plan and, therefore, possible adjustments must be made according to what was agreed.
In addition, different baselines can be adopted. Among them are:
- Scope: delimits what must be produced and the acceptance criteria for the project;
- Time: is the information that generates a schedule, with date specifications and activity assignments;
- Cost: is the budget to be invested, which must be measured using specific techniques, such as: analogous, 3-point estimates, and parametric;
- Quality: is the expected level of quality of products or results.
Finally, remember that the baseline must be updated when any project change is executed or if it is approved. Its update, in this case, must reflect the new scenario and determine a new goal to be achieved.
With these tips for measuring SLAs, you can consider optimizing it. This is what we will see next.
4.1. Clarify doubtful and specific points
The SLA is a document that needs to be very clear and precise. Any doubt must be immediately resolved. Thus, it is possible for your team and customers to know what to expect from the relationship and the services provided. Once again, specifying responsibilities is fundamental.
4.2. Train the team
Collaborators must know and control SLA protocols to avoid communication failures and identify which problems fit into each sphere. Similarly, the disaster recovery plan must be known, as well as the response to different priority levels.
4.3. Add clauses
These guidelines may seem dispensable, but they can be fundamental depending on the situation. This is a way to avoid vulnerabilities in the document and keep conditions under your control.
4.4. Design hybrid cloud migrations
The hybrid cloud is the trend for IT service delivery. Therefore, making the migration is a way to ensure customer needs are met and improve user experience. The care is with monitoring the limits between platforms, so that data is gathered, analyzed, and integrated.
5. Conclusion
Knowing how to define, measure, and improve the SLA is an efficient way to enhance your company’s services, reduce incidents, and increase business competitiveness. In addition, when this document is properly defined, there are fewer conflicts and problems.
In this way, the SLA guarantees the credibility of the IT service, especially because it includes deadlines, indicators and measurable goals, technical support, etc. For this, it is imperative to obtain data and adapt service levels to customer needs.
To access all these aspects, you should perform outsourcing with a reliable company. Thus, you will have access to a high-performance technical support team!
With all these requirements, you already know how to define, measure, and improve SLAs. So, how about putting these tips into practice?
