Capturing Service Level Requirements
Before detailed design work can commence, the service designers must have a good grasp of the service level requirements (SLRs). These SLRs represent what is required by the customer for a particular aspect of the service, and they are therefore based on business objectives. If the business objective is to sell more products through the company website, for example, the SLRs will specify the number of simultaneous users the website must be able to handle, the speed of response, and so on.
The high-level SLRs will have been discussed during the strategy phase of the service lifecycle and will have been used as an input to the decision whether the service should be developed at all. Once the decision has been made and the service moves into the design phase, it is the responsibility of SLM to expand upon and clarify these and any additional requirements.
As stated previously, SLRs relate primarily to the warranty aspects of the service, defining the capacity, security, availability, and service continuity requirements. They must be delivered in conjunction with the utility aspects defined elsewhere, if the service is to deliver value. The SLRs are an essential element of the service design specification, and specific testing criteria must be developed to ensure that these aspects are delivered by the design.
One issue encountered by service level managers is that the customer has not considered the service level requirements and therefore does not know what is required. The customer may have detailed and documented functionality requirements (the “what”) but has not defined the level of service required (the “how”). Service level managers will often draft an outline SLR as a starting point for negotiation. This can be a useful approach, focusing the customer’s thoughts about what they really need, but it should be flexible enough to allow for requirements to be developed through discussion and negotiation. As stated previously, SLM must ensure that clear, objective targets are agreed; if the customer requires the new service to be faster than the existing one, how much faster does it have to be?
