Service level agreement: Difference between revisions

A [[service level agreement]] (“fondly”<ref>Few people who have ever been party to one look upon an SLA with any kind of fondness</ref> known as an '''[[SLA]]''' — that is an ''ess-ell-aye'', not a “slah”) defines the level of service you expect from a vendor, laying out the [[metric]]s by which the service is measured, and your remedies and [[Penalty clause|penalties]] should agreed-on service levels not be achieved.  

''It is a critical component of any vendor contract.''

Thus, in a stroke, the [[SLA]] demonstrates the folly of [[outsourcing]]: an [[Survivor|internal resource]] may be expensive, truculent, workshy and in need of holidays and a pension, but (at least in theory) to get a decent job out of her you don’t need an [[SLA]]<ref>This won’t stop [[middle management]] trying to impose one, of course.</ref>: the better the job {{sex|she}} does, the more the bonus she’ll get!<ref>IN THEORY. OK folks I know it doesn’t really work like that but the collective is often gripped with a madness a crowdish delusion that it is somehow different.</ref>

But once you have outsourced the role to a free agent patrolling the free market, that calculus, however delusional it may be, changes. Now your starting assumption is that your agent will do as little as he humanly can to comply with the blackest of the letters of your agreement. Anything more is economically irrational (so sayeth the Smiths, Friedmen and Hayeks of this world). Your service provider has agreed a fixed fee for its services, it is his sole and constant interest to expend as few resources as are humanly possible to earn that fee.