Use case

Consult the following use case for information about how to achieve value with the BMC Service Level Management product:

Ensuring timely service responses using BMC Service Level Management

This example shows how a stock trading company, XYZ Financial, would use BMC Service Level Management to ensure there is an efficient service and timely responses in its stock trading application. This use case discusses three roles:

Administrator — Configures settings and sets up reusable templates in the Application Administration Console.
Service level manager — Creates a contract between IT and the customer. She also creates the service targets and the associated SLA that she negotiated with the customer.
Service owner — Creates the OLAs and their related service targets to support the SLA with the customer. The service owner also creates an internal contract to which she can associate the OLAs for reporting purposes.

Planning the agreement

The service level manager plans the agreement. When the requirements are determined and the agreement is defined, the manager can move on to creating the contract.

Creating the contract

XYZ Financial, a stock trading company and ABC Systems, its IT service provider, have drawn up a contract in BMC Service Level Management for the ABC Systems to run the online trading application. The contract information provides information such as who the contract is with, when it expires, accounting codes, and costs.

From the Agreements tab, in the MSP Customer field, the service level manager with BMC Service Level Management Unrestricted Manager permissions selects either a group or a role who has permissions to view the data in the agreements and service targets, reports, and dashboards related to this contract.

In the Group form, the administrator defines groups and users who belongs to those groups.

In the Roles form, the administrator defines roles for the application and maps them to the groups.

The service owner at ABC Systems creates another contract for internal purposes to which she can associate the internal OLAs.

Defining the service target

XYZ Financial needs to have the online trading application working very efficiently; the application needs to be fast and operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Therefore, urgent problem and incident requests must have a rapid response time. The service level manager for XYZ Financial and the IT Service Desk Manager of ABC Systems translate these business requirements into the following service targets:

Urgent (high priority) incident requests must be resolved within 15 minutes, or transferred to the application on an alternate server.
Medium priority incident requests must be resolved within 1 hour.
Low priority incident requests must be resolved within 4 hours.
The online trading application must respond within 4 seconds. Three request-based service targets are attached to one service level agreement, and this SLA must be 99 percent compliant over the defined period.
The ABC Systems company sets up two operational level agreements for internal use.
- An operational level agreement for change with the following service target: Any change to the stock system are implemented within two days.
- An operational level agreement for network service with the following service target: Any network incident must be resolved within 30 minutes.
- These two operational level agreements must be 100 percent compliant.

Creating business time in the Application Administration Console

First, the administrator needs to configure business time, review periods, and templates. Setting up these configurations in the Application Administration Console enables them to be used by any agreement or service target to which they apply, and speeds up the agreements creation process.

In the Application Administration Console, the administrator sets up the business time for the stock trading company. He sets the business time when the service is not operating and the measurements do not take place.

He sets the holidays when the company is closed.
- 01/02/07
- 04/14/07
- 09/04/07
He creates a maintenance schedule named Maint1 and relates two maintenance activities to this schedule.
- A one time, end of the year maintenance activity on 12/30/06 from 08:00 a.m. to 05:00 p.m.
- A regular scheduled weekly maintenance every Sunday from 05:00 p.m. to 08:00 p.m.

Creating review periods in the Application Administration Console

The administrator sets review periods in the Application Administration Console. He creates one for a monthly review and one for a daily review. These review periods are the periods of time over which the compliance target needs to be met.

Creating measurement criteria templates in the Application Administration Console

You can create templates for criteria you want to use more than once. Here is an example for the stock trading application.

The administrator sets up a template for measurement criteria for the request-based service targets because these might be used for multiple service targets.

Measurement criteria template for resolution-time service target
Start When: Service Status=Assigned.
The service target begins measuring when the service status of the request is "Assigned."
Stop When: Service Status=Resolved
The service target completes its measurement when the service status of the request is "Resolved."
Exclude: Service Status=Pending
The service target pauses its measurement if the request is in a "Pending" state.
Measurement criteria template for response-time service target
Start When: Service Status=New
Stop When: Service Status=Work in Progress
Exclude: Service Status=Pending

Creating incident resolution time service targets

The service level manager begins with the incident resolution time service targets. She starts to create the service targets. She opens up the Service Level Management Console, clicks the Service Target tab, and clicks Create.

To create high priority resolution-time service targets

Basics
She begins with the high-priority resolution service target. She enters the following in the fields:
Applies To: Sample Incident Management application
Goal Type: Resolution Time
Terms and conditions: Priority=High AND Category=stock trading.
Goals and costs
For a goal and cost schedule, the service level manager sets up a schedule for the high-priority resolution service target that specifies the impact costs to the business if the resolution time of 15 minutes is not met at various times of the week.
She enters the following settings:
- Sun 12:00:01 a.m. to 11:59:59 p.m. with an impact cost of $100.00 per minute
- Mon 12:00:01 a.m. to 5:59:59 a.m. with an impact cost of $150.00 per minute
- Fri 5:00:01 p.m. to 11:59:59 p.m. with an impact cost of $200.00 per minute
- Saturday 12:00:01 a.m. to 11:59:59 p.m. with an impact cost of $175.00 per minute
- Default 12:00:01 a.m. to 11:59:59 p.m. with an impact cost of $250.00 per minute
  The default setting applies to all times other than those specific days and times set in the Goal and Cost schedule (that is, weekdays).
  She enters 15 minutes for the goal throughout the schedule.
  Goal and cost schedule for high priority resolution service target
  She selects the business times that the administrator has created in the Application Administration Console--the Holidays and the Maint1 schedules.
Measurement criteria and options
In the When to Measure fields, the service level manager uses the previously created a template specifying measurement criteria for request-based service targets, so she selects the Resolution Measurements template from the Use Template list. The Start When, Stop When, and Exclude fields are automatically populated.
Milestones

The service level manager creates a milestone with the following criteria:

After 50 percent of time elapses and the request is not "work in progress," the assignee is notified.
After 70 percent of time elapses and the request is not resolved the assignee and the service desk manager are notified.
After 85 percent of the time elapses, and the request is not resolved, the request is escalated and the service desk manager is notified.

For milestones with high-priority resolution-time service targets, the service level manager clicks Finish to complete the creation of the high-resolution service target.

For medium-and low-priority resolution-time service targets, she creates two more Resolution Type service targets: one for a medium-priority resolution time of 1 hour with terms and conditions of Priority=Medium AND Category=stock trading, and one for a low-priority resolution time of 4 hours with terms and conditions of Priority=Low AND Category=stock trading.

Creating the service level agreement

The service level manager starts to create the SLA in the Agreements Console.

On the Related Service Targets tab, she completes the following tasks:
In the Related Service Targets tab, she enters a Compliance Target of 99 percent and a Compliance At Risk value of 99.30 percent.
She relates the service targets that she previously created to the SLA. She gives each service target a weighting to represent how important they are in contributing to the overall compliance target.
- The service target for high priority resolution time has a weighting of 5.
- The service target for application response time has a weighting of 4.
- The service target for medium priority resolution time has a weighting of 3.
- The service target for low priority resolution time has a weighting of 1.
  All these service targets must be met 99 percent of the time (with their weighted percentages applied) to make the 99 percent compliance target for the SLA.
  Relate Service Target tab for stock trading service
On the Review Periods/Penalty Rewards tab, the service level manager completes the following tasks:
The administrator has already created the review periods in the Application Administration Console. The service level manager selects the review periods to specify that the target compliance must be met on a monthly and a daily basis.
For the monthly review period, the service level manager includes two penalty criteria. If the compliance falls within 92.00 and 95.99 percent, the penalty is $6,000.00 for that period. If the compliance falls within 96.00 and 98.99 percent, the penalty is $1,500.00. ABC Systems pays XYZ Financial the penalty if the compliance falls within these ranges.
On the Milestones tab, she sets the following milestones and actions:#* If the compliance goal is at risk, an email is sent to the service manager.
- If the compliance goal is breached, the service level manager is paged.
On the Contracts/Attachments tab, the service level manager relates the SLA to the contract for XYZ Financial.

Creating operational level agreements

Another IT manager (the service owner) begins to create the service target for ensuring that any change to the stock system should be implemented in two days.

To create the service target for the change request

Basics
She enters the following information in the fields:
Applies To: Sample Change Management application
Goal Type: Resolution Time
Terms and conditions: Change Type=Change AND Category=stock trading
Goals and costs
She sets a goal of 16 hours (or two working days).
Measurement criteria and options
In the When to Measure fields, the BMC SLM Administrator enters the following qualifications:
Start When:Status=Request for Change
Stop When: Status=Completed
No Exclude criteria are required for this service target.
Milestones The administrator creates the following milestone and action:

After one day elapses (or 50 percent of the 16 hour goal) and the request is not resolved, the assignee is notified.
After one and a half days elapse (or 75 percent of the 16 hour goal) and the request is not resolved, the assignee and the service desk manager are notified.

Creating the operational level agreement for change

The service owner starts to create the OLA in the Service Level Management Console.

On the Related Service Targets tab, she completes the following tasks:
She enters a Compliance Target of 100 percent.
She relates the service target that she previously created to the OLA. The weighted percentage is 100 because only one service target is being related.
This service target must be met 100 percent of the time to make the 100 percent compliance target for the SLA.
On the Review Periods/Penalty Rewards tab, the service owner specifies that the target compliance must be met on a monthly and a daily basis. No penalties or rewards are associated with this OLA.
On the Milestones tab, she sets a milestone and actions defining that if the compliance goal is breached, the service owner is paged.
On the Contracts/Attachments tab, the service owner relates the OLA to the ABC Systems internal contract.

Creating a service target for the network service

The service owner begins to create the service target for ensuring that any network problems to the system must be resolved within 30 minutes.

Basics
She enters the following information in the fields:
Applies To: Sample Incident Management application
Goal Type: Resolution Time
Terms and conditions: Category=stock trading AND Type=Network
Goals and costs
She defines a goal of 30 minutes.
Measurement criteria and options
In the When to Measure fields, the service owner uses the previously created template specifying measurement criteria for request-based service targets, so she selects the resolution-time measurements template from the Use Template list. The Start When, Stop When, and Exclude fields are automatically populated.
Milestones The service owner creates the following milestone and action:

After 10 minutes elapse and the request is not resolved, the assignee is notified.
After 30 minutes elapse and the request is not resolved, the assignee and the service owner are notified.

Creating the operational level agreement for network service