SLAs can improve IT/Business Alignment

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between IT organizations and vendors help ensure expectations are clearly communicated and service delivery meets expectations. Instituting SLAs between supported business areas and the IT organization can also help improve IT/Business Alignment. While it takes time to sit down and discuss (and document) the expectations, it gives everyone a common frame of reference on which to move forward.

A couple points to consider:

• Adapt your SLA discussions to meet the business' culture. Some cultures are not condusive to a formal SLA process. Even if you don't put formal SLAs in place, having the conversations around expectations is beneficial.
  
  
• Document SLA discussions - Even it you don't formally institute SLAs, the process of initiating conversations and discussing expectations still opens up avenues of communication and creates bridges and alignment.
  
  
• Keep discussions positive and service oriented - create win-win for both the business and IT. Discussions should not be "us" and "them" type discussions. Instead, it should be "how can we best serve your needs" type discussions.
  
  
• Be accountable to what the business considers important. Track your statistics and progress against the SLAs. (Or, if you don't put formal SLAs in place, you at least now know what is important to the business and what they would consider credible statistics in which to measure how IT is really doing.

IT is so often only remembered when there is a problem. Understanding expectations and reporting your progress against those statistics goes a long way towards building trust and credibility with the business.

For more questions to ask during the SLA process, see this Computerworld article by Steve Case.