Service Level Management-Points of Failure
Version 1,
changed by
michellekennedy.
05/24/2007.
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| Featured: |
Yes |
| Title: |
Service Level Management-Points of Failure |
| Category: |
Service Level Management |
| Author: |
michellekennedy |
| Date Posted: |
05/24/2007
11:37AM |
| Introduction: |
There seems to be a lot of accelerated emphasis and interest recently in the industry on Service Level Management and implementing Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). As you begin your SLM journey, I would like to give you some insight on why Service Level Management fails. Hopefully, this will prevent you from experiencing these mistakes as you begin implementing a Service Level Management strategy in your company.
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| Article: |
There seems to be a lot of accelerated emphasis and interest recently in the industry on Service Level Management and implementing Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). As you begin your SLM journey, I would like to give you some insight on why Service Level Management fails. Hopefully, this will prevent you from experiencing these mistakes as you begin implementing a Service Level Management strategy in your company.
One of the most common pitfalls is that the OLA/SLA documents are too complex. These documents should be short in length, while very precise in defining the services you provide and the level of service you and your customers agree on. They should not be epic novels, defining every little element in the IT enterprise. If they are longer than 3-5 pages, you are doing it wrong!
Another common pitfall is that the technology and tool sets cannot track and report the timed service events by responsiveness and resolution, and by priority/severity classification. Nor can they provide current state baseline information on system availability, response time, or network performance, as well as monitor established service metrics. Good sound reporting for "BOTH" the IT organization and what the 'business' needs to see from IT and is paramount to ensuring that Service Level Management is institutionalized. SLM reporting must support real-time dashboards, simple point in time queries and most important of all good sound management decision support reporting. Without a continuous feed back process, the loop is incomplete, and the OLAs/SLAs become static documents and nothing more. It is worth noting SLA's possess penalty language (usually financial) with vendors while OLA's are internal objectives and may also possess penalties if, there are any internal charging mechanisms in an organization.
Senior management frequently does not acknowledge the amount of time needed to implement Service Level Management, and therefore they do not staff it adequately. This function requires the recognition from management that it must be staffed full-time. Unfortunately, this is not filler work someone can do in their spare time. There are a significant number of responsibilities that need to be assigned to this function to do it successfully.
Another frequent point of failure is unrealistic objectives and goals have been set by IT Management and Customers. This commonly happens to organizations that have not taken the time to baseline their IT wide service performance, prior to beginning to negotiate the SLAs with the customers. One of the primary reasons we baseline is to understand our ability to provide service within the current limitations of staffing and technology available, as well as the economic impact of the existing state. So when a customer asks for more, we are able to quantify the incremental impact in terms of resources and/or cost.
There is not total alignment and buy in at all levels of IT management. Their strategies, goals and objectives are not clearly defined. It is important that all levels within the IT Enterprise understand the value of implementing a Service Level Management culture. Without this commitment throughout the organization, it will be difficult for the line staff to understand it, and want to participate in it.
Some organizations believe they can implement customer Service Level Agreements without first having established their own internal Operational Level Agreements (OLAs). This can be uncomfortable for all participants if the entire IT organization is not closely aligned prior to beginning the process with your customers. In fact, it can be down right embarrassing! The journey of implementing OLAs goes far to develop understanding the current capacity levels of the IT Enterprise and the impact to levels of service being provided.
Finally, an organization implementing Service Level Management, must understand that this is a company wide initiative. It will have impacts to staffing, technology, and the company’s culture. This is NOT a project assigned to the Service Desk! This is a new way of viewing how you will work within the IT organization and with your customers on a permanent basis. Remember, SLM should always be guided by key business drivers, sometimes frameworks can assist in determining process maturity via ITIL, Service Catalogs, Vendor sourcing agreements and SLA / OLA language defined by the business drivers and the resulting metrics and dashboards used to gauge overall performance.
So as you begin your Service Level Management initiative, feel free to use the above elements as a guide on "How not to"!
Char LaBounty is President and Founder of LaBounty & Associates, Inc. located in Castle Rock, CO, an independent management consulting company focused on the growing field of customer support services. She can be reached at (303) 660-5994 or at char@labountyassociates.com.
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