Service Level Management

- Premanand Lotlikar

21st August, 2007

 Agenda
• Introduction
• Objective of Service Level Mgmt
• Basic Concepts
• Benefits
• Relationship with other processes
• Activities in SLM
• Process Control
• Key Performance Indicators
• Cost
• Possible Problems
 Introduction
• SLM is the process of
– Defining, negotiating, measuring, managing &
improving the quality of IT services
– At an acceptable cost
• Includes
– Service Level Agreements (SLA)
– Operational Level Agreement (OLA)
– Underpinning Contracts (UC)
 Objectives
• To align and manage IT services through:
– a process of definition
– agreement
– operation measurement
– review
• Create an effective relationship b/w IT
organization and its customer
 Basic Concepts
• Customer: representative of an
organization who is authorized to make
agreements on behalf of that organization
about obtaining IT services
– Not same as end user
• Provider: representative of an organization
who is authorized to make agreements on
behalf of that organization about provision
of IT services
 Basic Concepts
• Service Level Requirement (SLR):
– Cover the detailed level of customer needs
– Serve as a blueprint for design of a service
and associated SLA
– Also used for design assessment
• Service Specification Sheet (Spec Sheet):
– Describe the relation b/w functionality and
technology
– Translate SLR into technical definitions
 Basic Concepts
• Service Level Agreement (SLA):
– Agreement b/w IT organization and customer,
detailing the services to be provided
– Describes the services in non-technical terms
– In-line with customer perception
– Serves as a standard for measuring and adjusting the
IT services
• Service Improvement Plan (SIP):
– Defines the activities, phases and milestones
associated with improving an IT service
 Basic Concepts
• Service Quality Plan (SQP):
– Contains all the management info needed to
manage the IT organizations
– SLA is about ‘what’ and SQP is about ‘how’
– Includes targets for each process
• Incident Mgmt: resolution times for various impact
levels
• Change Mgmt: cycle times and cost of std changes
– Performance Indicators derived from SLR and
documented in spec sheets
 Benefits
• IT services designed to meet the
expectations
• Service performance can be measured
• Balance b/w cost and quality of service
can be drawn
• Both IT organization and the customer are
aware of its roles and responsibilities
• Improved customer relationship and
customer satisfaction
 Relationship with other processes
• Availability Mgmt:
– SLM provides Availability Mgmt with inputs on
the required availability of the IT services
– Availability Mgmt provides the information of
the actual availability to SLM
 Relationship with other processes
• Capacity Mgmt:
– Capacity Mgmt supports SLM by providing the
information about the impact of a new service
or the extension of an existing service on the
overall capacity
– It also indicates whether the use made up of a
particular service is within the agreed limits
– SLM provides CM with the information about
the expected current and the future use
 Relationship with other processes
• Incident and Problem Mgmt are good
indicators of effective implementation of
SLA
• SLM uses the information provided by
these processes when reporting to the
customer
 Relationship with other processes
• SLA can define the changes that can be
requested by the customer
• Also the agreements to respond to these
changes
– Whom to address the changes to
– Cycle time
– Costs
• A change may also affect the service level
 Relationship with other processes
• The creation or modification of a service or
SLA affects the CMDB
• CMDB is used to report the quality of CIs
to enable SLM to report the quality of
service
 Activities
• Identifying
• Defining
• Contract
• Monitoring
• Reporting
• Reviewing
 Identification
• Perceived quality of the IT service depends on
– Expectations of the customer
– Ongoing management of customer perception
– Stability of the service
– Acceptability of the cost
• Customers are not clear about their expectations
– Assumed aspects of IT services cause much
confusion
• Requirements of the customers must be
expressed in measurable values
 Definition
• Defining the scope and depth of
customer’s requirement is considered as a
design process in SLM
• Has three sub-processes
– Defining external standards
– Translation to internal standards
– Service Quality Plan
 Defining external standards
• Defining or redefining the customers
expectation about the IT service
• Expectations are formalized in SLR
• Involves the whole customer organization
• Generally the most difficult part
 Defining external standards
• Following info is required to define SLR:
– Description of the functions to be provided by
the service
– Times and days on which the service must be
available
– Service continuity requirements
– Reference to current operational methods
– Reference to SLA to be modified or replace,
wherever relevant
Translation to internal standards
• SLRs are developed in details:
– Unambiguous and detailed description of the
IT services and the required components
– Specification of the way in which the service
will be implemented and provided
– Specification of the required quality control
procedure
Translation to internal standards
 Service Quality Plan
• Includes all KPIs and specifications for
internal and external providers
 Contract
• After the specification phase, the business
needs have been translated into
resources and configurations
• This is used to draw the following
documents:
– SLA
– UC
– OLA
– Service Catalogue
 SLA
• Structure of SLA depends on a number of variables:
– Physical aspect of organization
• Scale
• Complexity
• Geographical distribution
– Cultural aspects
• Language of the document
• Relationship b/w IT organization and customer
• Charging policy
• Uniformity of business activities
• Profit or Non-profit organization
– Nature of business
• General terms and condition
• Business hours (whether 24X7)
 Service Catalogue
• Following tips are useful when writing the
service catalogue
– User customers language, avoid technical
jargon
– Look from customers perspective
– Provide an attractive layout, as this doc is
used to present before the customer
– Ensure that this doc is available to the largest
number of potential stakeholder
 Monitoring
• SLM can only be monitored if the service
levels are clearly defined
• Availability and Capacity Mgmt generally
provide info about the technical
implementation
• Parameters such as response time,
escalation and support time must also be
measured
 Reports
• Reports include:
– Availability and downtime
– Avg response time during peak hours
– Transaction rates during peak hours
– Number of functional errors in the system
– Avg number of users during peak hours
– No of successful/unsuccessful attempts to circumvent
security
– No of completed and open changes
– Cost of service provided
 Review
• Following must be considered in a review:
– SLA since the previous review
– Problems related to the service
– Identification of the service trend
– Estimates of cost of additional resources
– Consequences of failure of provision of the
agreed service level
 Review
• Actions to be taken if IT service fail to
meet the agreed service level:
– Developing a Service Improvement Program
– Allocating additional resources
– Modifying the service levels
– Modifying the OLA and UC
– Modifying the operational procedures
 Critical Success Factors
• Capable Service Level Manger with both
IT and business expertise
• Clear process mission and objectives
• Clearly defined tasks, authorities and
responsibilities
• Awareness
 Key Performance Indicators
• No of times SLA was not fulfilled
• Cost of measuring and monitoring SLA
• Customer satisfaction
• Statistics about incidents, problems and
changes
• Progress of improvement action
Cost
 Possible Problems
• Difficult to express customers needs in
terms of measurable standards and
associated cost
• Overhead cost of measuring and
monitoring service level is underestimated
• SLM documents could start becoming
ends in themselves
• Difficult to extract the exact needs of the
customer
Thank you!