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4.5.1 Monitoring and Reporting
4.5.2 Service review meetings
4.5.3 Service Improvement Programme
4.5.4 Maintenance of SLAs, contracts
and OLAs
The following ongoing activities must be undertaken to execute the process.
Immediately the SLA is agreed, monitoring must be instigated, and Service achievement reports must be produced. Operational reports must be produced frequently (daily - perhaps even more frequently), and where possible, exception reports should be produced whenever an SLA has been broken (or threatened if appropriate thresholds have been set to give an 'early warning').
Periodic reports must be produced and circulated to Customers (or their representatives) and appropriate IT managers a few days in advance of SLA reviews, so that any queries or disagreements can be resolved ahead of the review meeting. The meeting is not then diverted by such issues.
The periodic report should incorporate details of performance against all SLA targets, together with details of any trends or specific actions being undertaken to improve Service quality. Annex 4C gives an example of an SLA Monitoring (SLAM) chart which can be used at the front of the report to give an 'at a glance' overview of how achievements have measured up against targets. These are most effective if colour coded (Red-Amber-Green, and sometimes referred to as RAG charts as a result). Other interim reports may be required by IT management for internal performance reviews and/or supplier or contract management. This is likely to be an evolving process - a first effort is unlikely to be the final outcome.
The Resources required to produce and verify reports should not be underestimated. It can be extremely time consuming, and if reports do not reflect the Customer's own perception of service quality accurately, they can add insult to injury.
Service Level Management should identify the specific reporting needs and automate production of these reports, so far as possible. The extent, accuracy and ease with which automated reports can be produced should form part of the selection criteria for integrated support tools.
Periodic review meetings must be held on a regular basis with Customers (or their representatives) to review the service achievement in the last period and to preview any issues for the coming period. It is normal to hold such meetings monthly, or as a minimum, quarterly.
Actions must be placed on the Customer and provider as appropriate to improve weak areas where targets are not being met. All actions must be minuted, and progress should be reviewed at the next meeting to ensure that action items are being followed up and properly implemented.
Particular attention should be focused on each breach of service levels to determine exactly what caused the loss of service and what can be done to prevent any recurrence. If it is decided that the service level was, or has become, unachievable, it may be necessary to review and re-agree different service targets. If the service break has been caused by a failure of a third-party or internal support group, it may also be necessary to review the underpinning agreement or OLA.
| Hints and tips 'A spy in both camps' - Service Level Managers can be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion by both the IT Service provider staff and the Customer representatives. This is due to the dual nature of the job where they are acting as an unofficial Customer representative when talking to IT staff, and as an IT provider rep when talking to the Customers. This is usually aggravated when having to represent the 'opposition's' point of view in any meeting etc. To avoid this the Service Level Manager should be as open and helpful as possible (within the bounds of commercial propriety), when dealing with both sides. Ambassador for IT, lonely job, finds allies in other Service Level Managers (e.g. via itSMF). Never vent frustrations about colleagues with the client community - or criticise a colleague in public. |
The SLM process often generates a good starting point for a Service Improvement Programme (SIP) - and the service review process may drive this.
Where an underlying difficulty has been identified which is adversely impacting upon service quality, Service Level Management must, in conjunction with Problem Management and Availability Management, instigate a SIP to identify and implement whatever actions are necessary to overcome the difficulties and restore service quality. Further guidance on this and the specific techniques that might be used can be found in Chapter 6 of the Service Support book and in Chapter 8 of this book. SIP initiatives may also focus on such issues as User training, System testing and documentation. In these cases the relevant people need to be involved and adequate feed-back given to make improvements for the future. At any time, a number of separate initiatives that form part of the SIP may be running in parallel to address difficulties with a number of Services.
Some organisations have established an up-front annual budget held by SLM from which SIP initiatives can be funded. This means that action can be undertaken quickly and that SLM is demonstratively effective. This practice should be encouraged and expanded to enable SLM to be become increasingly proactive and predictive.
If an organisation is Outsourcing its Service Delivery to a third party, the issue of service improvement should be discussed at the outset and covered (and budgeted for) in the contract, otherwise there is no incentive during the lifetime of the contract for the supplier to improve service targets if they are already meeting contractual obligations and additional expenditure is needed to make the improvements.
SLAs, Underpinning contracts and OLAs must be kept up to date. They should be brought under Change Management control and reviewed periodically, at least annually, to ensure that they are still current and comprehensive, and still aligned to business needs and strategy.
These reviews should ensure that the services covered and the targets for each are still relevant - and that nothing significant has changed that invalidates the agreement in any way (this should include Infrastructure Changes, business Changes, supplier Changes etc). Where Changes are detected, the agreements must be updated under Change Management control to reflect the new situation.
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