Create a Service Level Agreement

This assessment task requires the development of a service level agreement for the following project:

ATM ID:

RFT 22-20XX

Agency:

Australian Federal Police

Category:

81100000 - Professional engineering services

Close Date & Time:

24-Jan-20XX 2:00 pm (ACT Local Time)

Publish Date:

22-Dec-20XX

Location:

ACT, NSW, VIC, SA, WA, QLD

Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane

ATM Type:

Request for Tender

Multi Agency Access:

No

Panel Arrangement:

No

Description:

This RFT seeks responses from suitably qualified and experienced service providers for the development of an Enterprise Wireless Solution Design (the 'services' and/or 'supplies').

Conditions for Participation:

The AFP will exclude a Tender from further consideration if it considers that the Tender does not meet the following Conditions for Participation:

(a)the Tenderer exists as a legal entity (see clause 2.3);

The AFP will not enter into an Agreement with Service Providers who have had a judicial decision against them (not including decisions under appeal) relating to employee entitlements and have not paid the claim.

Timeframe for Delivery:

From February 20XX

Address for Lodgement:

Responses must be lodged electronically via AusTender (www.tenders.gov.au)

Note: Your Assessor will take the role of the client.

This will require you to:

• negotiate and formulate contracts
• access and analyse relevant information on resources and budgets
• analyse current and future contract requirements
• monitor resource use, cost efficiency and effectiveness against contractual obligations
• review objectives and performance measures.

In order to achieve this, work through the following steps to produce the contract:

Step 1. Analyze Technical Goals and Constraints

The ideal method to come up with realistic and sustainable technical goals is to think of the various requirements and technical goals that could improve the level of service over time. Technical goals usually include throughput, delay, jitter, availability levels, scalability, response time, new application introductions, security, new feature introductions, and cost.

Once all the technical goals are penned down, it is time to look at the constraints and risks involved in achieving the technical goal. Risks and constraints can be categorized mainly in three categories - life cycle practices, current traffic load or application behavior, and network technology, configuration, and resiliency.

Step 2. Determine the Availability Budget

The expected theoretical availability of the network between two defined points is called an availability budget. You can determine the overall availability budget by multiplying the availability for these areas:

• Hardware availability
• Software availability
• Environmental and Power Availability
• Link or Carrier Failure
• Network Design
• User Error and Process

Step 3. Create Application Profiles

Creating an application profile makes it easier for the networking organization to understand and define service level requirements and the network services provided by the organization overall. It also serves as a documented baseline for the network service support and aligns network service goals with the business requirements.

Step 4. Define Availability and Performance Standards

The service expectations for an organization are set by keeping in line with availability and performance standards. These can be determined for different areas of a specific application or network. Now there are several ways you can measure the performance of the service in terms of throughput, overall scalability, and jitter, round-trip delay, and bandwidth commitments.

The organization must further define each of the service standards so that IT groups and customers can have a clear understanding of the level of service being provided to them.

Step 5. Define Network Service

The last step towards basic service level management is defining network service. Network service defines all the proactive and reactive network processes and network management capabilities that can be implemented to achieve service level goals. The network service definition is included in the last document of the agreement called an operations support plan.

The operations support plan must include these three key aspects:

• Full description of the reactive and proactive processes used to achieve service level goals
• Management of the service process
• Measurement of service level goals and service processes

Step 6. Collect Metrics and Monitoring the Service Level Definition

A service level definition on its own is completely useless if the organization fails to collect the metrics and monitor the performance of service being provided to the customers. When preparing a service level agreement, ensure that a proper definition is given as to how the service level will be measured and reported.

PROCESS FOR SLAs

Step 1. Meet Prerequisites for SLAs

Experts believe that there are a few prerequisites that the organization must meet in order to come up with a spot on the service level agreement. Here are a few prerequisites you may want to consider.

• The organization must have a service oriented culture
• All IT activities must be driven by customer/business initiatives
• The organization must fully commit to the SLA process and contract

Step 2. Determine the Parties Involved In the SLA

You must choose wisely when it comes to choosing that parties must be involved in the SLA so that it serves as a platform for coming up with new service level goals. Some of the possible goals are:

• Create and meet reactive support business objectives
• Provide the top level availability by clearly defining proactive SLAs
• Promote or sell a service

Step 3. Determine Service Elements

Typical service level agreements usually have many different components including support level, how it will be measured along with overall budget concerns and escalation path for SLA reconciliation. Having proactive service definitions and reactive goals are a must for high availability environments. Some of them are listed below.

• Onsite support business hours and procedures for off-support timings
• Priority definitions like the type of problem, maximum time for solving the problem and escalation processes
• Products and services that are to be supported and ranked in order of business criticality
• Support level issues pertaining to geographic and business units
• Goals for improving help desk service
• Network error detection and service response
• Funding the implemented SLA
• Procedures for conflict resolution
• Measurement of network availability and reporting

Step 4. Define the SLA Required For Each Group

Primary support service level agreements must include functional group representation, critical business units, server operations, networking operations and application support groups. Such groups are usually on business needs as well as the roles they play in the support process.

Step 5. Negotiate the SLA

The last step of creating an SLA is final negotiation and sign off. SLA negotiation is further split up into the following steps.

• Review of the draft
• Negotiation of the contents
• Edit and revise the document
• Obtain the final approval

Step 6. Measure and Monitor SLA Conformance

To ensure long-term consistency and results, measuring SLA conformance and reporting results becomes an important aspect that one must pay due attention to. It is recommended that all major components of the SLA must be measurable, and a measurement method should be put in place prior to implementing the SLA. Problems can then be solved by holding meetings with the customers quarterly or as and when problems arise.