Service Level Management

Basic Concepts

Suppliers, customers and users

Customer: the company or organisation that contracts the IT services offered.

Users: the people who use the service.

Supplier: the company or organisation that provides the services the customer requires.

Service Catalogue

The Service Catalogue is more than just an essential tool in simplifying communication with the customer. It can also be a great help to the internal organisation and the external profile of the IT organisation.

The Service Catalogue must:

• Describe the services offered in a non-technical way that is accessible to customers and non-specialist staff.
• Be used as a guide to orient and direct customers.
• Include, in general terms, the levels of service associated with each of the services offered.
• Be available to the Service Desk and all the staff in direct contact with customers.

Service Level Requirements (SLR)

The SLR should include detailed information about the customer's needs and expectations in terms of performance and level of service.

The SLR constitutes the basic element for defining the SLA and possible related OLAs.

Specification Sheets

The specification sheets are primarily technical documents for internal use that delimit and define the services offered to the customer.

The specification sheets should evaluate the resources necessary to offer the service required with a sufficient level of quality and determine whether it is necessary to outsource certain processes, and serve as a base document when drawing up the OLAs and UCs concerned.

Service Quality Programme (SQP)

The SQP needs to incorporate all the information necessary to enable efficient management of the levels of quality of the service:

• Targets for each service.
• Estimate of resources.
• Key performance indicators.
• Supplier monitoring procedures.

In short, SQP must contain the information necessary for the IT organisation to know about the processes and procedures involved in supplying the services provided, ensuring that they are aligned with the business processes, and so maintain appropriate quality levels.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The SLA needs to describes all the details of the services offered, in layman's terms, or at least in language comprehensible to the customer.

After it is signed, the SLA must be treated as the reference document for relations with the customer in all aspects of the delivery of the agreed services. It is therefore essential that it clearly define the essential aspects of the service, such as their description, availability, quality levels, recovery times, etc.

Operation Level Agreement (OLA)

The OLA is an internal document specifying the responsibilities and commitments of the various departments of the IT organisation in the delivery of a particular service.

Underpinning Contract (UC)

The UC is an agreement with an external supplier to provide services not covered by the IT organisation.

Service Improvement Programme (SIP)

The SIP must include corrective measures for faults detected in the service levels and proposals for improvements based on developments of the technology.

The SIP must form part of the basic documentation for the renewal of the SLAs and must be kept internally so that it is available to the managers of other IT processes.