Strategy and IT Management

SLAs should only include those items that can be effectively monitored and measured at a commonly agreed point. Inclusion of items that can’t be effectively monitored almost always results in disputes and eventual loss of faith in the SLM process.

It is essential that monitoring matches the customer’s true perception of the service. A service that is available only to the edge of the data center and not to the end-user is not a complete service and provides little value to the business. Monitoring of services must show the service from an end-to-end or value perspective. Monitoring must also detect when failure of a component recorded at the service desk results in failure of a service and potentially of an SLA. Further, it should indicate how many end-users are potentially impacted by the failure. This will determine the impact and possibly the urgency of a given incident.

This capability requires a well functioning CMDB and the ability to connect incidents with both components and services. SLA breaches are first identified at the Service Desk, so it is very important that appropriate processes and procedures are in place and that they are followed. If this is not done, the reporting may indicate SLA breaches where none actually occur or it may indicate no breaches when they do occur. Either way, the result is bad for IT. It is also critical that SLA information, such as triggers and escalations match between the SLM and incident/problem recording systems.

There are a number of important ‘soft’ issues that can’t be monitored by technical or procedural means such as customer satisfaction, which may not match ‘hard’ monitoring. For instance, even when there have been a number of reported service failures the customers/end-users may still have positive feelings about IT performance. The opposite may also happen when the service is performing normally, but customers/end-users still feel dissatisfied. These types of disconnects primarily occur because of human interaction between end-users and the service desk or customers and process/IT managers. In these situations, perception often outweighs the facts and human errors taint the perception of IT.

Given the importance of soft issues, the question arises; how do we measure soft issues? The simple answer is that you ask the customer or end user what their perception is. Measuring soft issues however is as much an art as it is science. Political pollsters, the masters of this art, are famous for asking the same question in slightly different ways and getting completely different results. They are also famous for selecting the wrong group of people to ask.

Measuring soft issues will take continuous effort over time but it is vital for the long term success of IT. One way to increase the objectivity of these measures over time is to set targets for soft issues that can be quantified and improved.

In order for processes and services to be managed and optimized, there must be a feedback loop that provides management information regarding the functioning of the processor service. This requires monitoring the process or service in appropriate ways to ensure that it is meeting the stated goal in the most effective and efficient manner. From an ITIL or quality perspective, the success of the process or service is measured at the point where the output of the process or service is consumed. Within the ITIL framework, this means that services are measured from the end-user and customer perspective or on an end-to-end basis. Processes should be measured at the point at which their output is consumed and on their contribution to the end-user and customer experience.

This requires creating the ability to monitor services on a significant number of workstations, both when the end-user is utilizing the service and also when they are not. Why would we want to monitor the service, when the end-user isn’t using it?

We learned that the Service Desk is directly responsible for end-user perception of IT, and indirectly responsible for customer perception. Now, we learn that Service Level Management is directly responsible for customer perception of IT, which is influenced by end-user perceptions, and will be very interested in monitoring Service Desk performance.

Service level management should make every effort to develop a baseline of understanding for the initial perception of the services. This will enable them to paint a before and after picture, once SLM is firmly established. Part of the picture should include the lack of adequate capability to measure perception prior to implementation. It should also include a description of new capabilities to measure and to report customer perception after implementation.

Plans need to be made for evaluating and implementing or improving UCs and OLAs in support of new SLA targets. Service level agreements do not stand alone. Often, multiple IT groups work together to provide services to end-users. Operational level agreements document this capability and establish clear expectations in support of SLA targets.

Often, services are dependent on outside vendors for parts of their functionality. For an SLA to be enforceable, the underpinning contracts with those vendors must support the SLA targets.