See my comments in RED -----Original Message----- From: John Johnson <spearmint.l...@gmail.com> To: arslist <arslist@ARSLIST.ORG> Sent: Fri, Jun 17, 2016 1:30 pm Subject: Let's discuss best practices on SLM between the SLA and OLA relationship for BMC Remedy
** The more I work on trying to provide best practices to a customer on SLM, the more I feel like I'm just not there in being able to fully explain the concepts and correctly guide them on how to configure the SLAs and OLAs. There are two parts to my issue with SLM: the first part is with the concepts around SLM (services, SLAs, and OLAs) and the second part is with implementing them in BMC Remedy. Please provide any comments you have on my thinking. Concepts Services There are two main types of services: Internal/External Customer Facing Services (IT services) -- let's call them Parent Services and Supporting Services (IT Provider services)-- let's call them Child Services. The Child Services should support the Parent Services. Many Child Services may make up a Parent Service. The top of the Service tree is the Business Service that is supported by the technical service that is support by one or multiple CIs Service Level Agreements These are agreements for the Parent Services Example: Email Operational Level Agreements These are agreements for the Child Services Example: Exchange, Network, Database Configuration based on concepts above Atrium Service Catalog You would define your services Service Level Agreements You would create an SLA and relate a Parent Service Regarding Incident Management, you would setup the SLA and then relate service targets to it. Typically the service target would only include the related company and priority in the "Terms and Conditions" field, and once related to an SLA, the service target would use the Service defined in the SLA as part of it's terms and conditions to get attached to an incident ticket. Operation Level Agreements You would create an OLA and relate a Child Service Related to Incident Management, you would setup the OLA and then relate service targets to it. Typically the service target would only include the related company and priority in the "Terms and Conditions" field, and once related to an OLA, the service target would use the Service defined in the OLA as part of it's terms and conditions to get attached to an incident ticket. So now my question is how would this work together in BMC Remedy? For example, a critical incident ticket is created because a user says that their email is not working and it's assigned to the Service Desk. The "Email" service would be related to the incident ticket using the "Service" field, which, in turn, would relate a specific service target (e.g. Email - Critical Priority Incident Resolution). Since "Email" is a Parent Service, the service target is related to an SLA. The "Email - Critical Priority Incident Resolution" service target will run from the time the ticket is created until it is resolved. The Service Desk does initial triage and then decides to escalate to a Tier 1 group. Tier 1 determines that there is an issue with a network component. Ideally, this network component should be part of a child service, which should be related to an OLA. So how should I continue? The ticket now needs an SLA and an OLA? Should a separate related incident ticket be created with the Child Service, so that the OLA would become attached? Is there some other way to have both the OLA and SLA attached to the original ticket? Should I design everything differently? In my opinion some of your concepts are false. The primary difference between an SLA and an OLA is that the SLA has a financial component.. There can be an SLA for a Business Service or the Technical Service or for the Server that supports the technical service. When I have set up the relationships in the past Messaging would be the Business Service since they could be multiple ways that people communicate, Email would be the Tech Service Exchange would be the application and Server X is the CI that Exchange runs on. the actual SLA for the Incident could be from the Service the or the CI selected in the Incident. Another thought was that the SLA should only be attached to Service Requests in SRM, and then only OLAs would be attached to the fulfillment applications. If this seems like a better solution. My only question is, because I haven't tested it, can we relate SLAs to the generic SRDs that Remedy uses when a Incident User creates a ticket directly in Incident Management and the system creates the related Service Request? _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
