Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Table of Contents
Lesson Contents
10
12
15
Availability Management
19
Availability Measures
21
23
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Watch out for these icons as you use your Study Guide. Each icon highlights an important
piece of information.
Tip this will remind you of something you need to take note of, or give
you some exam guidance.
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Lesson Contents
Text in "italics and quotation marks" is drawn from the ITIL core volumes
Quoted ITIL text is from Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation
and Continual Service Improvement
Crown copyright 2011 Reproduced under license from OGC.
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Service Level Management is responsible for defining the service targets that
are used to measure value.
The targets are documented in Service Level Agreements, which are defined and measured by
Service Level Management.
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Process Scope
The scope of Service Level Management is to be a path for communication between IT and the
business.
Although the Service Level Management roles are often part of the IT organization structure,
the process needs to be neutral and shouldnt be seen as favoring one side or the other.
Service Level Management includes current and future services, making sure that customer
expectations are realistic.
For new services, Service Level Management will produce a set of agreed Service Level
Requirements. These document what the customer wants, and are signed off so that everyone
understands what has been agreed.
Service Level Requirements make sure all services and service components are aligned with
business needs.
Every IT service should have targets documented as part of their Service Design. Service Level
Management has a major role to play during Service Design when targets are agreed.
The process is also responsible for providing ongoing measurement and reporting once the
service is live and operational.
As well as agreeing targets for new services, Service Level Management needs to make sure
that existing services wont be affected. A new service might mean another service starts to
perform poorly, so this needs to be understood and managed.
Although Service Level Management carries out a lot of work within Service Design, it also has
an ongoing role through the rest of the lifecycle. Part of its role is to monitor and measures live
services and provide reports to stakeholders and customers.
Its also worth considering what is NOT in scope for Service Level Management. This includes:
There is a close relationship between Service Level Management and Business Relationship
Management, but they have different areas of scope. Remember that BRM is more focused on
general customer satisfaction, and Service Level Management is more focused on specific
service targets.
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Exercise
Service Level Management needs to develop templates for SLAs.
Draw up your own template. What needs to be included in the document? For example, youll
need a service description.
Try and think of at least 10 things that need to be included.
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Exercise Solution
A typical Service Level Agreement will include:
Details of the service provider and customer representatives
Date and validity period
Service description
Scope
Service hours
Service functionality, availability, reliability, performance, continuity and
security targets
Support arrangements, contact points and escalation
Processes such as change and incident management
Roles and responsibilities
Charging (if implemented)
Reporting schedule
Glossary of terms
Remember, if you found this exercise challenging or have any questions, you can
email a tutor at tutor@itiltrainingzone.com.
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Contracts
If we use an external supplier as part of the delivery mechanism for an SLA, we will document
this in a contract. Contracts related to Service Level Agreements may also be referred to as
underpinning contracts (UPCs or UCs).
A contract is a legal document between two commercial entities. Its important to remember
that for your Foundation exam.
If a supplier fails to provide the service detailed in the contract, we may choose to invoke
contractual penalties or even terminate the contract and change supplier.
Service Level Management works with other processes such as Supplier Management to ensure
that the targets in contracts will enable us to meet the targets in our SLAs.
SLAs, OLAs and contracts will normally be written in different types of language.
There are different types of SLA that can be used - depending on the nature of
the service and the organization. The three SLA types are:
Service based
Customer based
Multi-level SLAs
The Service Level Manager has to decide which will be most appropriate for their customers
needs.
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Customers often prefer a customer based SLA, as it provides them with all of their service
targets in a single, agreed document.
Combinations of customer and service based SLAs are possible, but the Service Level Manager
will have to ensure that there is no duplication.
Remember
Whichever SLA structure we adopt, SLAs must be clear, concise and
unambiguous. If we cant measure a target, it must be left out of the
SLA. Targets that cant be measured are meaningless.
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The core activities for Service Level Management relate to managing and
monitoring the agreed levels of service.
Service Level Management ensures that reports are produced on time and distributed to the
correct audience.
The process will also manage any complaints or customer escalations, and conduct regular
Service Review meetings with the customer.
The service level manager is responsible for owning the service relationship with the customer.
They are also responsible for discussing the service level reports with them that show whether
or not services have met their targets.
SLM also provides templates and various standards such as draft SLAs. They will provide input
into the drafting of service level targets for new or radically changed services.
One of the reports that Service Level Management often uses is known as a SLAM chart or
Service Level Agreement Monitoring Chart.
A SLAM Chart is typically color-coded so that customers can see at a glance which targets are
being met and which may have been missed. They are often based around a traffic light system
red for targets that have been missed, amber for targets that have come close to being
missed, and green for areas that are performing within acceptable parameters.
Service Reviews
SLAM Charts and other Service Level Reports will feed into the regular Service Reviews held by
Service Level Management. Service Reviews are attended by the Service Level Manager and
the Customer, and are often held on a monthly basis.
This is not necessarily a fixed frequency reviews can take place weekly or maybe quarterly depending on what is appropriate.
Service performance is always discussed at Service reviews, as well as any changes that the
customer may need.
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Service Reviews are an important forum for communication between the service provider and
customer. It is important that regular communication channels are established and maintained.
Customer concerns and outputs from the Service Review will feed into the overall Service
Improvement Plan or SIP. Service Level Management is responsible for instigating and
managing this plan.
The service level manager is accountable for the process activities, but he or she may also have
a team of staff, such as service level analysts, working for them who will be responsible for a
number of key tasks.
Service Level Management will also work closely with other areas of the Service Lifecycle; such
as Service Operation which provides measurement of live services, and Continual Service
Improvement, which also works with the Service Improvement Plan.
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The Service Catalogue is the part of the Service Portfolio which provides a view
of live services. The catalogue is the part of the portfolio that is visible to
customers.
Service Catalogues can be complex documents used by a number of different audiences. They
should contain a view and a brief description of all live services.
Before we can document any SLAs, we really need to have a Service Catalogue in place so we
can understand the actual services that we are delivering.
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Service Packages
Some of the information in the Service Catalogue will include the service packages that are
available to customers.
Service packages are collections of services and Service Level Agreements that customers can
choose to meet their needs rather than having to pick lots and lots of individual services.
As part of its scope, Service Catalogue management will help to define these packages. The
process will also make sure that service is defined.
Before a Service Catalogue can actually be released to the business, the Service Provider has to
set up and populate the catalogue with relevant information.
One of the main difficulties experienced when implementing a service catalogue is answering
the question - what is a service?
This question can often involve the Service Catalogue Manager getting involved in long
discussions with their customers for example - about whether the network is a service, or
whether the internet is a service.
The network support team, for example, might well argue that the network is an essential
service. But from a customer perspective, the network would be a supporting service that they
wouldnt necessarily order on its own.
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The business or customer view shows the services that are relevant to customers, along with
any links to business units and business processes.
The technical or supporting view shows the supporting IT services that customers would be
unlikely to order on their own. The links to the customer-facing services that they support help
to show how critical a supporting service is.
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You can see that the supporting service view is still the same, but the customers are divided
into wholesale and retail service catalogue views. This allows different types of customer to be
shown the information that they need.
There is no right or wrong way to structure a Service Catalogue, and each organization will need
to create a structure that works for them. Service Catalogues often start as a simple
spreadsheet or matrix, before evolving to more complex views.
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Availability Management
Availability Management extends right across the service lifecycle, but its most
critical responsibility is during service design.
Availability management makes sure the availability requirements of the business are
understood, and are designed into each new or changed service. This means that services
match the business needs and are delivered cost-effectively.
The latest trends in technology and business reliance on IT mean that availability is becoming
more and more important.
For example, end-users of IT services expect their services to be available for longer periods of
time to suit their working patterns, as well as being made available from more places - to suit
mobile, home and weekend working.
Availability management needs to consider these requirements whilst the service is being
designed. Its much more expensive to change a service after it goes live.
Process Scope
The scope of availability management starts when availability requirements for an IT service are
clear, and doesnt finish until a service is retired.
The process has 2 key elements:
Reactive activities that deal with operational issues such as incidents and
problems
Proactive activities that plan for improvement and make sure availability is
designed into services
To carry out its role effectively, availability management must understand business and IT
information. They need to be aware of business requirements, and also how technology can be
exploited to deliver business outcomes.
Availability management should be applied to all services, planned and live. One area that is
explicitly out of scope for availability management is the restoration of service after a disaster
such as a fire or flood. This falls within the remit of IT Service Continuity Management.
The availability manager will work with any customer requirements that have been fed into the
service design. The role is also responsible for measuring availability and producing reports at
both the service and component levels. By measuring at service and component levels, the
Availability Manager will produce reports that are relevant to both customers and the technical
teams within the service provider.
Customers typically want to see end-to-end measures of service availability. This could be
given as a percentage. The user or customer is not necessarily interested in which actual
component failed to cause the downtime only the effect on service overall.
Component availability monitoring looks at individual configuration items like servers, network
links and routers. This level of monitoring is far more relevant to the service provider - as it
needs to understand the real impact of any component failure on the overall service.
If a service needs to be highly available, then component resilience will be built in. This means
that if a component fails, the overall service availability is not affected.
Component availability can have an impact on service availability, so its important for
availability management to work at these 2 inter-connected levels. All aspects of service and
component availability and unavailability need to be understood. Availability Management
information is stored in the Availability Management Information System or AMIS.
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Availability Measures
Availability
Reliability
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Serviceability
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