Service Level Management: Measure
In addition to real-time monitoring of SLA violations, service providers and customers should periodically review the achieved service levels and compare those to agreed upon targets. ITSM Service Level Management recommends that such meetings take place monthly or at least quarterly. The production of reports for these reviews can be extremely time-consuming and should be automated as much as possible. Log Intelligence solutions can automatically e-mail performance reports to customers and IT managers a couple of days ahead of the meeting.
At the meetings, particular attention should be paid to the root-cause of SLA violations and what can be done to prevent future instances. In some cases, it may become necessary to adjust SLA targets or to initiate a specific Service Improvement Program (SIP). In some cases SLA measures can also be used as a basis for charge-back relationships internally.