Service Management Best Practices

Overview

Defining an SLA without monitoring compliance is an organizational fiction. The SLA creates the appearance of a performance commitment without the operational reality of one. Customers are told to expect a certain level of service but have no assurance that it is being delivered because no one is measuring it.

Best Practice

Establish systematic monitoring of service performance against every defined SLA. Monitoring should be continuous or near-continuous rather than periodic, so that SLA breaches are identified in time to take corrective action before they escalate into customer complaints. SLA monitoring data should be reviewed by Service Owners regularly and reported to portfolio and organizational leadership on a defined schedule. SLA breaches should trigger defined response processes that identify root causes and drive corrective action.

Benefit(s)

Active SLA monitoring transforms the SLA from a documented aspiration into an operational commitment. Service Owners are accountable because their performance is visible and measured. SLA breaches are addressed rather than ignored because there is a defined response process. Customers develop confidence that the organization’s service commitments are real rather than nominal. Over time, consistent SLA compliance becomes a source of organizational credibility and customer trust.