Service level management, a component of the service selivery process, is the method of continually identifying, monitoring and reviewing the level of various IT services consented to in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The process of service level management guarantees that all the proper plans and arrangements in the form of Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and Underpinning Contracts (UCs) have been agreed upon by both internal IT Support-Providers and various external suppliers.
In many organizations, a service level manager is appointed to oversee this aspect of the operation. This individual will often work hand-in-hand with representatives of various other parts of the service delivery process, in order to ensure that SLA‘s are met efficiently, on-time, and on-budget.
Service level management assesses the impact of various changes to network infrastructure in regard to their impact on the level of service quality settled upon in the service level agreement. Seeing as this string of management is dependent on the functionality of the system, they tend to work in close proximity to the other operational processes, in order to control their activities and ensure that such activities are in line with what the clientele has been promised.
Since service level management tends to have close ties to all other aspects of the IT department, it is also a natural venue for software metrics to be established, which allows for the creation of benchmarks. Software metrics are the measure of any given property of a piece of software. While not accurate one hundred percent of the time, metrics can usually give a good idea of a program’s functionality. Commonly measured traits include schedule, size or complexity, cost, and quality. Since an overemphasis on any one amongst these aspects is liable to create an imbalance in the team’s ambitions, most IT departments will try to maintain a balanced scorecard of some kind, to ensure that no aspect is being overlooked or underutilized.
The information retrieved from these metrics, along with any other judgments from the service level management team, is subsequently used to influence the teams in charge of availability management, capacity management, incident management, and problem management. Each team then alters their activities so as to meet the service level recommendations. Said recommendations, however, must be feasible within the resources granted by the financial management team.
The service level management team is also charged with the responsibility of creating and updating a service catalog, which is a list of commonly available IT options and agreements which are readily available for clientele to choose from. As well, the team must ensure that reasonable IT service continuity plans are in place, so that the business need not worry about having to slow down or cut back its IT department when inevitable hardware replacements are required.
All in all, service level management acts as the watchdog for quality control within an IT department. The team ensures that clientele get what they need, regardless of when and where they need it, along with the guarantee that the appropriate services will be secure, cost-effective, and wholly beneficial.
