To negotiate service level agreements (SLAs) with IT customers, monitor service level targets, perform service reviews, and initiate service improvement plans.

The purpose of the Service Level Management process is to ensure that the service delivered to customers matches or exceeds the agreed, committed service quality characteristics.

Read the Service Level Management Key Concepts.

Important links

• Service Level Management Tool Mentors
• Tivoli® Open Process Automation Library Extensions for Service Level Management
• Implementing Service Level Management

Outcomes

As a result of the successful implementation of this process:

• Both the providers of IT service and their customers have a clear, unambiguous and consistent expectation of the quality of service to be delivered and received
• Service commitments are achievable
• Service attainments against targets are reported accurately and in a timely fashion to all defined service stakeholders
• Service quality is revived in an agreed way following any service level breach
• Opportunities for continual service improvement are identified and, where cost-justified, realized
  

Scope

This process addresses lifecycle management of service level agreements, covering negotiating them with IT customers, monitoring service level achievements against targets, performing service reviews, and initiating service improvement plans.

Includes

• Establishing strong relationships with customers based on mutual trust
• Implementing Service Level Agreements - from feasibility through monitoring, renewing and improving
• Integrating the service characteristics of domain specialist processes (such as Availability, Capacity, and others)
• Evaluation of IT transactional service performance in relation to business services and their requirements
• Creation and maintenance of Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) with providers further along the service supply chain, and consideration of resulting requirements for and performance defined in Underpinning Contracts (UCs)
• Reporting to customers on any aspect of service level attainment, including reviewing variation from target
• Oversight of the implementation (by other processes) of Service Improvement Plans related to service level quality
  

Excludes

• Making decisions on requests from customers for new services and/or functionality (Portfolio Management)
• Primary responsibility for contractual relationships with either customers or suppliers (Supplier Management)
• Pricing the elements within the service catalog and specific SLAs (Service Pricing and Contract Administration)
• Technical work to implement changes to any service component or operational procedures relating to service improvements (As appropriate: Many individual processes, Change Management, Portfolio Management)
  

Key performance indicators

• Number of agreed upon service level agreements (SLA)
• Percent of IT services usage covered by SLA
• Customer satisfaction with SLA parameters and attainment
• Percent of SLA attained
• Percent of SLA clearly prioritized based on the value of the agreement
• Value of SLA attained versus not attained
• Accuracy of attainment projections throughout period
• The direct costs associated with this process

Relation to other processes

• Service Level Management is one of the most important processes in IT, as it sets the tone for providing IT services rather than just managing IT resources.
• Service Level Management receives Service Metric Data and Reports from Request Fulfillment, Service Execution,  Data Management, Event Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, and Identity and Access Management.
• Service level agreements (SLAs), operational level agreements (OLAs), and underpinning contracts (UCs) are created by Service Level Management to be used by many processes to understand what service levels must be achieved.
• The Service Catalog is used by Service Marketing and Sales, IT Strategy, Portfolio Management, Request Fulfillment, and Capacity Management.
• Service Review Results are an important input into the Customer Satisfaction Management process.
• Service Improvement Plan may be used by other processes to generate Change Request to improve services.

For more information

For more information, see Service Level Management in the ITIL® documentation.

In addition, see the IBM® Service Management Web page.