Stage 2 - Managing the ongoing process

In this stage, agreements and service targets are monitored automatically. If targets are not being met, or agreements at risk, notification actions are automatically triggered for the appropriate people. In addition, the service level manager keeps track of results using the dashboards or reports, and works with other IT staff to create appropriate action plans for service improvement. 

The following image shows the service targets monitoring process flow:

The steps involved in this process are as follows:

1. Monitoring and managing agreements.
   1. Automated monitoring of agreements--The results of one or more service targets are combined to determine the overall compliance of an agreement (an SLA, OLA, or underpinning contract).
   2. Automated monitoring of service targets--Each service target is monitored based on changes to an incident or other request, or based on key performance indicators collected from the infrastructure.
   3. Manual management--In addition to the automated monitoring and sending of notifications that occur, the service level manager monitors daily status and trends over time.

2. Periodically calculate the compliance of agreements--Compliance is calculated based on the defined review period as shown in the following table:
   
   The following table shows the compliance calculations:
   
   Frequency of compliance calculations
3. Are there actions to perform?--Based on the defined milestones. If an agreement is at risk or has been breached, actions might occur to alleviate the breached compliance.
4. Perform defined actions (Notifications/Incident Creation/Other)--The service level manager or IT service manager might want to be notified. You can configure BMC SLM so that an incident is automatically created to track an issue with compliance.
5. Evaluate if the service target met its criteria--For example, was the incident resolved within 4 hours? Was the application response time less than 5 seconds?
6. Are there actions to perform?--Based on the defined milestones, if the expression for the service target reaches a specified threshold, or there is no response to a request within the allotted time, actions can prevent inadequate service.
7. Perform defined actions (Notifications/Change in Priority/Other)--The IT service manager or incident manager can be notified about an incident that has not received the appropriate response.
8. View dashboards and reports--By viewing the dashboards and reports, the service level manager can see immediately which agreements are at risk or breached, which service targets are not performing well, and the costs and penalties that have accumulated.
9. Problems found?--Do any agreements or service targets need attention?
10. Interact with IT staff and other systems to determine the root cause of the problems--Now that the service level manager knows which agreements and service targets have problems, she reviews the key performance indicators that those service targets are measuring. Working with other IT staff and other processes, such as incident management and problem management, she can determine the root cause of the problem.
11. Interact with IT staff and other groups to determine action plan--What steps must be taken to improve the service?
12. The IT service manager generates a change request to implement the plan.

The process continues with Stage-3-Reviewing-and-driving-service-improvement.