What Causes SLA Violation in Modern Companies?
During maintaining current business partnerships or gaining a few beneficial ones, a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) plays an important role in outlining expectations and business objectives from both parties.
Rana, Warnier, Quillinan, Brazier & Cojocarasu (2018) generally specifies SLAs in his study as performance-related properties referred to as Quality of Service (QoS) terms that must be maintained by a provider during service provision.
SLA represents an agreement between IT Service Providers and their customers that contains a set of responsibilities and obligations called as Service-Level Objectives (SLO). In addition to that, SLAs also detail sets of performance that should be achieved during the service agreement.
SLA Violation
In recent years, the art and science of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) has evolved from monitoring metrics around systems and applications to a focus on business outcomes and business performance. However, when SLAs are not monitored regularly and do not align with the current business environment due to a lack of updates and revisions, they become ineffective. Additionally, SLAs become incoherent and misinterpreted, which leads to unclear messages and objectives for both IT Service Providers and their customers and causes violation. Trienekens, Bouman, and van der Zwan (1999) elaborate 3 circumstances which can trigger SLA violation as follows.
1. Unclear and Incomplete Service Specification
In certain cases, some service specifications needed more detailed information and particular facts that differentiate them from other services. According to Trienekens, et. al., a key problem is that there is not yet a good classification and there are not yet good definitions of disaster. Therefore, SLA becomes violated when the customer didn’t grasp the information of service specification or when the service providers didn’t specify the services they offer.
2. Insufficient Cost Management
Costs and budget of IT Services are usually fixed at the beginning of an agreement, however, there are some conditions that require stretching and that means additional costs. These conditions should be stated at the beginning of the agreement so that both parties are aware of their cost management and avoid unclear interpretation. Unclear is in that way these costs can be differentiated and can be related to specific IT Services, and in particular to the needs and the wishes of a customer (Trienekens, et. al.).
3. Unfulfilled Requirements and Obligations
SLA usually marks out details of roles and responsibilities for both parties that need to be complied with in order for the business process to run smoothly. However, without regular monitoring and evaluation, the requirements are not fulfilled and disrupt the performance results. This caused unwanted accidents or conflicts during the process.
SLA is a contract that specifies service delivery; however, SLA is sometimes overlooked and not updated. SLA, in fact, is not merely a contract, but more about expectations and standardization.
Conslusion
SLA needs to be both prepared carefully and monitor regularly to minimize risks in the business process and gain beneficial partnerships. With suitable frameworks and approaches, violations in SLA can be avoided and mitigated effectively. Learn more on how to resolve SLA violation and minimize low productivity in your IT services.
