Stage 1 - Implementing agreements
The following image shows the agreements process flow:
Implementing agreements process flow
The process begins with the following steps:
- Talk with business about needs—To be successful with service level management, a relationship needs to be established and nurtured between IT and the business (the customer). The service level manager (or business relationship manager) meets with business managers and business users to understand their needs.
- Identify service requested—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. Some of these services might already be established services that the IT organization provides. Some of the requested services might not yet exist.
- Review and define or validate required OLA or UC—For those services that already exist, the service level manager verifies that valid (that is, unexpired) OLAs and underpinning contracts are in place. The service level manager can also review past performance of the service's OLAs and underpinning contracts or both.
- Check whether any changes to OLAs or UCs are required.
- If there are changes required, negotiate with IT and external vendors.
- Get agreements from IT and external vendors for OLAs or UCs—If there is a new service that the business requested, the service level manager engages the IT service manager to establish the new service and commit to certain levels of service. These new OLAs or UCs are then defined.
- Validate and review with customer—If IT or the external vendors do not agree to the changes, the service level 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 agree on the type and level of service, the baseline OLAs and UCs can be created (if needed) and tested.
- Decide whether a service level agreement (SLA) needs to be created or updated to support business needs—There might be an existing SLA between IT and the business with the same levels of service.
- Create or update a test or baseline SLA—If an SLA must be created, or an existing SLA requires modification, it occurs at this stage. The SLA is then tested or baselined to see whether it meets its compliance levels.
- Monitor test results—The service level manager is diligent when monitoring how the SLA performs so that the customer's expectations will be met or exceeded when this SLA enters production.
- Decide whether any changes to infrastructure are required—If the SLA is not performing to expectations, the service level manager discusses the problem with the IT service manager. The IT service manager determines whether any changes to the infrastructure are required and estimates their costs.
- Create or update proposal—If additional infrastructure is required, the business might be responsible for the costs. The service level manager creates or updates the proposal for the services and levels of service that can be provided to the business.
- Negotiate agreement with business—The service level manager negotiates further with the business.
- Review whether changes to SLA proposal are required.
- Does business agree to SLA?
- Are infrastructure changes required to support and fulfill the SLA?
- Generate required change requests to assess, schedule, and implement the infrastructure changes.
- Create or update test or baseline SLA--If the SLA requires modification or one must be created, it occurs at this stage. The SLA is then tested or baselined to see if its compliance can be met.
- Monitor test results--The service level manager is diligent when monitoring how the SLA performs so that the customer's expectations will be met or exceeded when this SLA is put into production.
- Move SLA to production. The agreements and service targets are implemented. This concludes the first stage. For details on how to implement the agreements and service targets, see Best practices for defining agreements and service targets.
Best practices for defining agreements and service targets
During , the service level manager determines the type of service targets required and creates the service target definitions and agreement definitions. The following figure illustrates the implementation process for defining agreements and service targets.
The following figure shows the implementation process flow:
Implementation process
The following table outlines the process for defining agreements and service targets during Stage 1.
Action | Description |
|---|---|
Define the terms and conditions or data source for the service target. |
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Define goals and costs | What is the goal for incident resolution time? What is the goal for application response time? What is the monetary impact on the business for every minute that this service target is missed? |
Define measurements | Define the measurements for request or availability service targets. What statuses identify when the asset or configuration item being monitored is available or unavailable? Should the service target ever pause if the incident it is monitoring is pending information from the requester? These attributes are part of defining measurements for the service target. |
Define milestones and actions | What proactive steps should be taken if an incident or other request is close to missing its goal? Proactively identify the processes to follow for notifying the assignees about the service target goal for the request, reminding them as they get closer to that goal, and escalating to their manager if progress is not being made. |
Create agreement | After the service target is defined, it should be placed inside an agreement so that it can be monitored over various time periods and according to compliance goals. |
Categorize the agreement as SLA, OLA, or underpinning contract. |
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Define the compliance target | How often does this agreement need to be met? For example, 98% of the time? |
Add service targets | One or more service targets can be added to the agreement and weighted based on their importance. |
Define review periods | How often does the compliance target need to be met? On a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis? Select one or more review periods. |
Define milestones and actions | If compliance is at risk or is breached, what steps should be taken to prevent the business from being negatively impacted and to avoid penalties? Perhaps notifying the service level manager is appropriate here, or defining the steps to create an incident to track the compliance issue is appropriate. |
Roll up into contract | The service level manager associates the agreement with the appropriate contract. If it is an OLA, it is associated with a contract for the IT organization. If it is an SLA for a particular customer or line of business, the agreement is associated to the contract defined for that customer. If it is a underpinning contract, then associate it with a contract created to represent the relationship between IT and the external vendor. |
Calls to initiate actions in other applications | If the actions that have been defined make calls to other applications (such as Incident Management), the system will perform those steps when the milestone takes place. |
The process continues with Stage 2 - Managing the ongoing process.