Question

Scenario A large, privately owned company has an internal IT organization that runs most of its IT operations from the head office. There has been a history of confusion about what is required from the services and what has actually been achieved, particularly from a warranty perspective. This has resulted in a strained relationship between the business units and the IT organization. Some service-based agreements exist between IT and the customers, where all levels of response to incidents were set to the same targets. Availability targets have not been reviewed for at least two years. There have been a number of complaints by key customers claiming that the IT staff have been resolving incidents and implementing change requests based on operational ease rather than business priority. This is despite operationally robust processes being in place for incident, change and problem management. A plan has been put in place to improve the level of the IT service delivered to the organization. Retirement of the post-holder meant that the first action was to appoint a new IT director. The opportunity was taken to select a candidate from an external organization, who was committed to the ITIL framework. The new IT director believes that good IT service management practices are essential. The IT director plans to implement many of the service management processes and has already overseen the creation of a basic service catalogue. The IT director is sure that many of the current issues can be rectified through the implementation of service level management (SLM) and has therefore directed that service level agreements (SLA) be introduced for the services provided before moving onto other areas. You have been asked to lead the project to establish SLAs for the IT services. Refer to the Scenario. Which one of the following sequence of activities would be the BEST approach to establishing service levels agreements (SLA) in the organization?

Accepted Answer

Identify all of the services currently delivered using the service catalogue. Define a primarily customer-based approach to implementing service levels agreements (SLAs). Using a pre-prepared pro-forma service level requirements (SLR) template, meet with the appropriate customer representatives to discuss and document their service level requirements. Arrange meetings with the appropriate IT teams, specifically those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to discuss, document and agree the levels of service required. Draft agreements from these discussions are then reviewed by service operations to ensure that no existing agreements will be compromised and, once this has been confirmed, the SLA is formally reviewed, agreed, and signed by both the customer and IT. The service level targets are then formally communicated, monitored, reported upon and reviewed at the agreed intervals.

Answer

Identify all the services currently delivered using the service catalogue. Define a primarily service-based approach to implementing service level agreements. Using the service templates already in use, meet with the appropriate customer representatives and, after discussion, produce formal SLRs which document the levels of service that the customer needs. Arrange meetings with the appropriate IT teams, specifically those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to discuss, document and communicate the levels of service required. From these discussions operational level agreements (OLAs) are then produced. The SLRs and OLAs can be formally monitored, reported upon and reviewed at the agreed intervals.

Answer

Meet with the IT operations team, specifically, those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to define what level of service they can offer to the business against each service in the service catalogue. Meet with the appropriate customer representatives to give them a clear understanding of the levels of service IT can offer. Produce and agree an SLA and ensure it is signed by representatives of both parties. Document and agree OLAs with the service operation teams. Ensure all parties understand their responsibilities and enforce penalties for non-compliance. Once both agreements have been signed, all service level targets are then formally monitored and reviewed.

Answer

Identify all of the services currently delivered using the service catalogue. Define a primarily service-based approach to implementing service level agreements. Meet with the appropriate business representatives and, after discussion, produce a formal SLA that guarantees the levels of service that the business needs. Arrange meetings with the appropriate IT teams, specifically those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to inform them of the service levels you have agreed Document and agree OLAs with the service operation teams. Once these are agreed and signed the OLAs are passed back to the business to demonstrate that IT will support the SLA and to build upon the trust between the two parties.

Scenario A large, privately owned company has an internal IT organization that runs most of its IT operations from the head office. There has been a…

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