How to Agree an SLA when There Is No Customer

Image Credit: Andy Roberts Photos
on Flickr.com

There are situations, when it is difficult to agree an SLA because... there is nobody to talk to. There seems to be no ownership of the subject on the business side. Everyone uses the service, but nobody really feels he or she is the customer. Just users everywhere; no decision-making power. They seem to have varied and undocumented expectations and they rightfully complain when they are not met. How to avoid failure?

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10 Reasons Why SLA Implementations Fail

There comes a time where you want to take your IT maturity to the next level. So you take the challenge and decide to set up service level agreements with your business customers. Let's see what you and your partners should NOT do if you want to succeed.

Image credit: © TheThirdMan - Fotolia.com

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IT Support - Small Team Edition

One of the challenges of small IT teams, is how to cope with end user support, while continuing the main activities of the team. It applies to any small team. The challenges might be slightly different for internal IT teams and small IT businesses, but the key questions remain. Who should take care of it? How should the responsibility be assigned?

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How to Support Customers of IT Startups

Starting up a successful IT company is a dream of many. There are plenty of successful initiatives out there and many more will follow. The day the offer gets out on the market is critical. The customers, especially the early adopters, need to be served exceptionally. Today, let's focus specifically on B2B products and services and discuss how to set up a customer service function in a small, startup company.

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IT Mission Statement

What is the purpose of having IT in the company? We all know it needs to be there, but why specifically? Is it to provide technology and fix it when it breaks? Some CEOs may think so. It is, however, a very limited perception. The mission of IT is much broader than that.

The concept of a service, so familiar to ITIL practitioners, is very handy for the purpose of creating IT mission statement. IT nowadays does not provide technology, but services. Email is a service, so is videoconferencing or sales system provision. But is it enough?

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Pitfalls of KPI Reporting

Ah yes, KPI reporting. We all love it, don't we? Well, it doesn't really matter if we do -- we have to do it. Everyone in the business of IT Service Management is measured by a set of KPIs. People's performance is measured this way, process efficiency as well. There are some common pitfalls of reporting that you should be aware of and try to avoid.

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IT Comic: Requirement Verification

Image credit: Anna Chęć

Finding out about the true requirements is good... but not at the end of the project.

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