ZEP Add Service Catalogue and SLA pages

There are the components related to this ZEP:

• Service Catalogue (a mapping of a business service to IT resources)
• Organizational / Service Level Agreements (detailed descriptions of the service)
• changelog to record any updates and who made them
  
• documentation updates to describe the rationale behind these new pages and an example of how to use the new pages.
• reports to describe relationships between CIs (Change Items) and the Service Catalogue
  

The service catalogue will be composed of a page containing items such as the following:

Service name

The name that the business uses to describe the service. A reasonable example might be "e-mail", "customer order", "monthly payroll".

Description

A description in business terms about the service.

Deliverables

A description of specific results that can be obtained from this service.

Service Level

Platinum / Gold / Silver / Bronze

Service Notes

Free-form text field for adding pertinent information about this service.

IT Resources

A set of links to specific services or machines that are needed to support this service. This could include routers, web servers, DNS or application services.  This should be able to be viewed as a part of any future dashboard services.

Customer links

A set of links to FAQs or service guides about the service. These links should be of the type and quality that will be suitable for viewing by the people using the service.

Provider links

A set of links about the service suitable for use by people managing the service. This might include simple tests to determine if the service is available.

OLA/SLA links

Links to OLAs or SLAs (or their master agreements)

Business Impact

A table listing time periods (eg 5 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks) and the business impacts if that service is unavailable or unusable for that time period. The intent is that specific business impacts be listed so that it is possible to gauge the effects of certain actions. Enough room should be left so that it is possible to specify that, for instance, payroll is only important twice a month.

Creation date

When this Service item was created.

Last change date

Last time this service was modified

Review date

When this service offering is to be reviewed next by the agreeing parties.

Expiry date

When this service offering expires, if ever.

The intent is not to have this form be exhaustive -- if it's too big no-one's going to use it, everyone will hate it, it will be too hard to explain or learn, and an exhaustive list will just exhaust everyone involved.   Once the structure is in place, people should be able to modify it to suit their specific site with the specific "must haves".  And site modifications will need to be backed up and upgraded differently when upgrades come.

   If this business service to IT resource mapping is done, then in the future it will be easier to provide "what if" scenarios needed by change management for what business units are affected by an application or server upgrade.  A quick and dirty report or two might do the trick here.

NB: An SLA is an agreement between your organization and an external organization (eg a supplier), whereas an OLA is an agreement between different groups within your organization.

The OLA/SLA forms should be able to be grouped, so that, for example, a master SLA can be "sub-classed" to make it easier to maintain.  An OLA/SLA should contain

Service name

The same name as listed in the Service Catalogue.

OLA / SLA Organization

A radio button to choose between the two, with a text box to insert text or a link to the other organization.

Signing Parties

Who signed off on this agreement, and can be contacted about changes.

Metrics

A list or table of specific, measurable performance parameters.  The key is "measurement" -- if the metric isn't measurable it isn't meaningful.  This should be able to be linked back to the enterprise version's performance monitoring data.

Conditions of service

Will this service be available all the time (24x7x365)?  Are there outage windows and backup windows associated with this service?  Will this part of the agreement still hold force in a disaster recovery scenario?

Errata 

Any other notes or information about this OLA/SLA

Creation date

When this Service item was created.

Last change date

Last time this service was modified

Review date

When this service offering is to be reviewed next by the agreeing parties.

Expiry date

When this service offering expires, if ever.