The Underscore Archives

I've recently written several SLA's - they're all very different because
each SLA is bespoke for the client's requirements.

Suggest the starting point is to properly understand the client's support
requirements and expectations. Suggest this is best done face-to-face with
the client (in a corporate environment this is ideally the business sponsor
that pays the bills).

When gathering clients expectations I've found that categorising
requirements as 'must haves', 'nice to haves', etc useful.  Also, it is
useful to review the past incidents to 'tease out' client requirements.

I don't know what system you're supporting... however, for us, international
bank holidays seem to always cause problems so make sure this is covered in
the SLA :-)

Because SLA's are bespoke there is no 'best practise' i know of - however,
certainly look at the ITIL framework (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library).

Cheers,
Andy

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Joel Hughes (the elder) <
underscore at jojet.com> wrote:

> Hi [_],
> am interested in the general forumala, ingredients, constraints etc
> which people put into the mix when crafting a support agreement for
> looking after a website for a client.
>
> e.g.
> - office hours/out of hours?
> - guaranteed resource each month?
> - what is covered/not covered
>
> The reason I ask is that I aint got no such thing in place at the mo and
> I feel more and more unbillable hours are going out on such things and I
> want to put a structure in place for my benefit as well as the clients.
>
> Any thoughts/best practices etc much appreciated.
>
> Joel Hughes (the elder)
>
> --
> underscore_ list info/archive ->
> http://www.under-score.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/underscore
>



-- 

Kind regards,

Andrew Gill
07880 730096