Service Level Agreements are usually the object of desire, fear, and uncertainty all at the same time. They can be such useful tools that it’s important to demystify them. SLAs are desirable because they provide accountability and timely feedback to managers. They are to be feared when they include factors beyond control or that are poorly aligned with reality. SLAs are commonly approached with a high degree of uncertainty about what to measure and how to report results as an effective tool for all parties. While the ingredients in SLAs are as varied as applications and service providers, all effective SLAs share a few critical characteristics.

Good and Bad SLAs

Let’s start by poking fun at what will be the worst example of an SLA you’ve ever heard of or that I’ve been a party to implementing. I should point out this happened long before I became part of the Heroix team. I was brought in to design and implement a monitoring and reporting regime that supported the SLA between a web hosting provider and a Wall Street firm seeking its first web presence. Considering the big-time clients and huge capital expenditure (100 servers in two data centers), I was expecting a challenging assignment with a highly sophisticated and complex set of monitoring requirements. When I received my copy of the SLA, a single paragraph appendix to a large contract, it had one condition: