Establishing agreements

There are three main areas to consider when establishing agreements.

Establish relationships

A relationship needs to be established and nurtured between the service owner and the business relationship manager. The business relationship manager meets with business managers and business users to understand their needs. The outcome of the discussion with the business is an understanding of the services the business requires for the upcoming period and into the future.

Review services

Some of these services might already be established services that the IT organization provides. Some of the requested services might not yet exist. When reviewing services, do the following tasks:

• Review and define or validate required Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) or Underpinning Contracts (UCs). For those services that already exist, the business relationship manager verifies that valid (unexpired) OLAs and underpinning contracts are in place. The business relationship manager can also review past performance of the service's OLAs and UCs.
• If there is a new service that the business has requested, the business relationship manager should engage the IT service manager to establish the new service and commit to certain levels of service. These new OLAs or UCs are then defined.
• If IT or the external vendors do not agree to the changes, the business relationship manager re-engages with the business. They discuss the levels of service that can be delivered and work to gain consensus.
• Create or update the test or baseline OLA or UC. When all parties are in agreement on the type of service and the level of service, the baseline OLAs and UCs can be created and tested, if needed.

Create agreements

Many organizations want to create agreements for every service in their company. These companies end up overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to accomplish this task and end up frustrated when they cannot meet expectations. Successful implementations begin by identifying the top one or two major services or pain points and build service models around them. These topics should be considered when creating agreements:

• Service expectation level and responses to problems
• Escalation procedures
  Define the escalation procedures (milestones and actions) you'd like to take if the compliance target misses, is at risk, or falls below a specific percentage. These proactive milestones and actions allow you to prevent lagging performance over time. For example, if the compliance target is at risk, notify the SLA manager.
• Reusable policies
  This includes defining a set of standard measurements, metrics and associated goals that can be applied over and over again to a large part of your environment. Create the terms and conditions of your workflow objects with reuse in mind.
• Identification of what to measure
  Agreements between service suppliers, service owners, and customers must clearly document items that can be effectively monitored and measured. Metrics must be fully quantified and agreed upon by both parties. Subjective measurements should never be allowed. For example, some questions that your service level agreements should be able to answer include:** What is an acceptable response time for a high priority issue?
  • How quickly should a down service be restored?
  • What percent of time were my servers available?
  • What is the transaction throughput customers are receiving?

  • What tools are at your disposal to monitor customer issues? Can you run reports that show how quickly is your IT staff responding to customer's questions and problems?
    
    Sample requirements for a service desk service target

    Priority	Response time*	Milestone	Action	Resolve* time*	Milestone	Action	Time allocation
    Critical	30 minutes	80% of the time allotted	Page/SMS message assignee manager	1 hour	80% of the time allotted	Page/SMS message assignee manager and director	24/7 clock
    High	2 hours	80% of the time allotted	Email assignee manager	4 hours	80% of the time allotted	Email assignee manager	Business time***
    Medium	4 hours	80% of the time allotted	Email assignee manager	8 hours	80% of the time allotted	Email assignee manager	Business time***
    Low	8 hours	100% of the time allotted	Email assignee manager	16 hours	100% of the time allotted	Email assignee manager	Business time***