First post - Asked to formulate SLAs/KPIs for network technicians

[DrBeaker]

The annual budget given to the NM is well over £40k per annum, I am investigating how this compares to other schools. This is for full IT provision, refresh of IT suites (4 year cycle), teacher laptops/desktops, license renewals, servers etc.

 

That's pretty small then to be honest IMHO. One place I worked had about £60-70K a year and we had to push back PC replacements and upgrades back by about 2-3 years due to that. We had some 8-year old old AIO's that were literally dying.

 

Any budget for staff training? IT techs not getting any training and being expected to know about new systems, software and hardware etc is pretty demoralising too you know and also a recipe for burnout for your less experienced staff - and that's from personal experience too. Be careful how you treat your IT staff too or you'll end up losing them too. Myself and another tech left within 9x months of each other at one place and that was combing 7x years of support and tribal knowledge?

[blue_n_white]

Also, instead of just looking at the SLA/KPIs, look at particular functions within them ... if communication has been a problem then getting an acknowledgement and regular updates on progress is possibly one of the best targets for bridge building with staff. The SLA should have a first response time and then subsequent update times until fixed. I'm half tempted to say don't worry about the fix times at this point.

 

Likewise, making sure that problem management is in place, not just incident management.

 

Are you also workign with them to explain and expand on IT Service Management? The FITS Foundation is still about, but most of the earlier iteration of FITS is available on OGL via the National Archives dump of the Becta site.

 

Just a few thoughts.

 

Thanks for the constructive advice!

[blue_n_white]

Brilliant summary! Yes, Yes and Yes!

 

SLA's also require the resources to be available to meet the SLA. E.g. In one place we had to share a laptop between 3x techs. So if the other tech is using it and I get a ticket that I need the laptop for - how does that work? In another place (not a school) we simply didn't have staff to be able to answer the phones (management resources problem IMHO) so how could the SLA ever be met and how could people be judged on it?

 

Exactly as @AButters has said - one minute you could be doing something for a teacher but the next you might be called and asked to go help out with a visitor for guest wifi access etc.

 

 

 

I'm in a similar situation now. Short version - The previous "Network Manager" left with no handover to me. Consensus seems there was no trust in his skills or his customer service. All I can do is try to improve things from now on and staff have already told me "I'm far better than the previous tech"

 

 

 

BINGO! I've got 10x year old PCs with 5/6x year old DELL's being the newest kit. Login times in excess of 15-20x mins are a daily occurrence currently. I recommended to the SLT last year basically EVERYTHING needs to be replaced ASAP to get things moving again. I got stonewalled. Staff were moaning, complaining to me etc. What can I do? The budget is out of my hands.

 

 

 

 

Agree on all points. I have myself have inherited what is quite frankly a big mess and years of neglect and lack of investment. No spares, no budget. It's not going to magically change overnight.

 

Spares - how old is the equipment?

Teachers reporting things - They need to report things so I can prove I need funding, extra resources etc. That's what's got me my new computers I'm deploying this week.

 

Addressing each of your points:

 

Each member of the team has their own desktop and phone line that the work from

 

With 3 people on the IT team I would expect a NM to delegate and prioritise based on the need rather than the person who needs support.

 

As mentioned in an earlier post the annual budget given to the NM is well over £40k, toners and papers come from a different budget, the IT budget is for hardware refresh, annual licenses etc. I am investigating how this compares to other similar sized schools

 

Teachers do report things and report them regularly to the IT email. There is little or no follow up to communicate on issues. This is one thing we are working to address.

[blue_n_white]

That's pretty small then to be honest IMHO. One place I worked had about £60-70K a year and we had to push back PC replacements and upgrades back by about 2-3 years due to that. We had some 8-year old old AIO's that were literally dying.

 

Any budget for staff training? IT techs not getting any training and being expected to know about new systems, software and hardware etc is pretty demoralising too you know and also a recipe for burnout for your less experienced staff - and that's from personal experience too. Be careful how you treat your IT staff too or you'll end up losing them too. Myself and another tech left within 9x months of each other at one place and that was combing 7x years of support and tribal knowledge?

 

What size school was the school where you got £60-70k?

 

In terms of staff training we have offered to pay for any training the NM requires, so far the quote he has given us is for Microsoft server training, this has been agreed.

 

Training for teachers in using ICT done in house by others teachers, the IT team contribute to this where necessary

[DrBeaker]

...

 

With 3 people on the IT team I would expect a NM to delegate and prioritise based on the need rather than the person who needs support.

 

As mentioned in an earlier post the annual budget given to the NM is well over £40k, toners and papers come from a different budget, the IT budget is for hardware refresh, annual licenses etc. I am investigating how this compares to other similar sized schools

 

Teachers do report things and report them regularly to the IT email. There is little or no follow up to communicate on issues. This is one thing we are working to address.

 

Has he actually got any skills in delegating, prioritisation etc? Sometimes the obvious answer, isn't always so obvious. I didn't have those skills 5x years ago I was in another role I didn't need them - so you know what I did? I brought some management books, read them and continually improved my skills. I'm now in a role where I have the respect and understanding of SLT, teaching, support staff etc and what I can bring to the table.

 

There is little or no follow up to communicate on issues

- that's not good enough really. Even a simple "Resolved" is better than nothing.

 

What size school was the school where you got £60-70k?

 

In terms of staff training we have offered to pay for any training the NM requires, so far the quote he has given us is for Microsoft server training, this has been agreed.

 

Training for teachers in using ICT done in house by others teachers, the IT team contribute to this where necessary

 

Microsoft server training - Blimey! Do you have any vacancies? How about some customer service training for him and the team?

 

A school with over 1700 students and 250 staff, a sixth form and a business centre.

[HereIGoAgain2601]

A lot of good advice here. I would say that depending on the size of your school £40k isn’t a lot. Licenses particularly Microsoft agreements can eat into a chunk of that. We have around 150 staff at one school and our license agreement will be £10k this year. Put on the occasional SMART Board / Projecotr / C-Touch that’s another £4-5k. It doesn’t take long before it’s gone, especially when staff come out of the blue and SLT have told them they can have something. We budget every year for the infrastructure and hardware we need. Every year we spend this but are massively over budget because of all the little extras that slt throw in. Also worked in a lot of schools where all sorts of software ends up coming out of the IT budget rather than the department it belongs to. Best speaking to the bursar and see what’s actually available to spend. Everyone’s budgets are tight and have been cut not just IT, but as said previously part of the gripes could be that there has been a historic lack of investment. A good server infrastructure could set you back significantly but if the switches, WiFi servers etc haven’t been maintained so many repeat problems find their way onto the IT team, and you do feel demoralised keep trying to fix things. Nothing is worse than being expected to make things work when the equipment just isn’t there to do it. We work with a few schools and the turnaround has been significant. Big upfront spent to get things back to where they need to be, with annual replacements and maintenance. You’d be surprised how much support time can actually come down once the system is setup properly. Maybe you should get an external advisor to come in and see how things are setup and provide some guidance. would be good for the NM performance management and support to have someone to work with. Might even make them feel better to see that someone else is identifying the same concerns. Also worth looking into the abilities and skills of the IT team. Are they being best used and does the NM support them? Some examples we have seen are techs with not many skills but with a particular interest in Apple for example. We have seen NM who didn’t like mobile devices, so was able to pass over this day to day responsibility to someone who was interested with the right training. Hope this helps.

[blue_n_white]

Has he actually got any skills in delegating, prioritisation etc? Sometimes the obvious answer, isn't always so obvious. I didn't have those skills 5x years ago I was in another role I didn't need them - so you know what I did? I brought some management books, read them and continually improved my skills. I'm now in a role where I have the respect and understanding of SLT, teaching, support staff etc and what I can bring to the table.

 

- that's not good enough really. Even a simple "Resolved" is better than nothing.

 

 

 

Microsoft server training - Blimey! Do you have any vacancies? How about some customer service training for him and the team?

 

A school with over 1700 students and 250 staff, a sixth form and a business centre.

 

Our school is half the size of the school you worked at with approximately 800 students and around 100 staff, over £40k seems in line with the numbers of staff and student at both schools (as a crude comparison).

 

We are trying to support the NM and IT support team, they have not previously been held to account and finding the process difficult.

[DrBeaker]

@blue_n_white Sometimes there are useless IT people - God knows I've worked with some of them over the years. But I've also worked with some fantastic people I haven't worked directly with in years, but would hire them without a shadow of a doubt if I had the chance. However those type of people I can count on one hand.

 

Make sure the IT team have got the tools to do the job - honest to god, one job I was in they didn't even have a screwdriver! One place I left as I simply wasn't given the resources I needed to do my job! i said I need X, Y and Z. They'd say sure ... and months later I'd end up with B instead. I'm sure you get the picture.

 

Keep us all updated.

Edited February 20, 2019 by DrBeaker
Typo

[Roberto]

SLAs actually have the potential to be a rod to beat IT teams with, which might explain the reluctance of the IT staff to engage with them, however, if a SLA is constructed with sympathy to both the resources available and the needs of the organisation then they can be useful to both sides; if we establish a SLA of 1 day for provisioning an account, for example, then while this might mean people asking questions of IT if it takes more than one day to create an account, it equally provides a shield for the IT team from people expecting this to be done instantly.

 

Equally, the IT people can say “well if you want a guaranteed fix for a broken iPad in *that* timeframe, you will need to fund a replacement stock of 10% sitting in the cupboard ready to go,and it will take *x* long to set up a replacement so we need *y* staff time available to meet that which means hiring *z* staff...” which might well focus the minds of people asking for a rolls Royce on a Lada budget.

[mikeprice]

SLAs actually have the potential to be a rod to beat IT teams with, which might explain the reluctance of the IT staff to engage with them, however, if a SLA is constructed with sympathy to both the resources available and the needs of the organisation then they can be useful to both sides; if we establish a SLA of 1 day for provisioning an account, for example, then while this might mean people asking questions of IT if it takes more than one day to create an account, it equally provides a shield for the IT team from people expecting this to be done instantly.

 

Equally, the IT people can say “well if you want a guaranteed fix for a broken iPad in *that* timeframe, you will need to fund a replacement stock of 10% sitting in the cupboard ready to go,and it will take *x* long to set up a replacement so we need *y* staff time available to meet that which means hiring *z* staff...” which might well focus the minds of people asking for a rolls Royce on a Lada budget.

 

Yup - that was what I was trying to say - but you did it better

[Primus]

As previously said - £40k is not as generous as it may seem.

 

We have around 1100 students and 160 staff and with all our subscriptions: MS, Adobe, Veeam, NetSupport, SIMS licensing etc are already at £39k.

 

What exactly is coming out of the £40k - telephones? broadband? filtering? What licenses do you currently spend on?

Edited February 20, 2019 by Primus

[steve]

An SLA can help give clarity to both the school and your IT staff. Written well it can be provide a team not only direction and a sense of purpose but also with some protection and push back if issues are being perceived by the management / staff.

 

In the past I've written SLAs with the following contents:

 

Service Details - an overview of the services you'll provide and how. Will you be undertaking A/V, in class support, etc.

How will work be logged - ticket system only, outside is not monitored to SLA

When - Hours 8 to 4 weekdays, term time only?

Expectations - how you prioritise - institute wide - class - individual

KPIs - What will be measured and what will be the target

Prioritisation - Levels / target response times. Definitions of terms

Guidance to users - e.g Availability of end users when troubleshooting

Ticket logging requirements - what needs to be included

What information will be given to user - ticket number and priority

How the user will be kept up to date

Escalating any issues - How this can be done

Limitations of service - Personal devices, equipment / software purchased without consultation (lowest priority / no guarantees), malicious damage, failing to follow guidance - good data practice, software support. etc. etc.

Review mechanism - How often, who.

 

If you can get management buy in and agreement on how you will work, what will be considered as acceptable behaviour from users then you can use an SLA like a contract. Clear expectations from both parties.

 

You don't have to see an SLA as stick you'll get beaten with. If you're not meeting the targets, why? Do you have the resources, funding, cooperation, support that you need to delivery the agreed services?

[Roberto]

The annual budget given to the NM is well over £40k per annum, I am investigating how this compares to other schools. This is for full IT provision, refresh of IT suites (4 year cycle), teacher laptops/desktops, license renewals, servers etc.

 

 

Ok, unless your idea of “well over” is at least double, that’s a fraction of my budget just for operational expenses (e.g. software, toners, misc odds and ends) at my old employer, a 6th form college. As of right now, comparisons are unfair because it’s a different field entirely, but I think I committed us to spending that on one minor project during a 30 min Skype call this morning. No wonder things are fraught, I’m sure you’re doing the best you can to secure that funding but it’s unlikely to be enough for your IT team’s needs.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Roberto

[DrBeaker]

....Service Details - an overview of the services you'll provide and how. Will you be undertaking A/V, in class support, etc.

 

How does in-class support work out? You might be qualified to fix the IT problem, but how does that qualify you to work with children, to mentor them etc kind of thing during lesson support?

 

How will work be logged - ticket system only, outside is not monitored to SLA

 

Does that mean walkups, corridor stops etc are officially void and they're not allowed to stop us in the corridor (as it would impact on the SLA of whatever else we're working on right then ?

 

When - Hours 8 to 4 weekdays, term time only?

 

Does that include when people send emails late on nights, weekends and during out of hours etc. IMHO anything sent outside of service hours an SLA would only START to apply aas soon as business opens the next working day. E.g. a request for something on Monday morning that's sent on Sunday night I wouldn't consider (under an SLA system) until at least 08:00 for example.

That when literally it's a case of "A lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine". Even if the IT team did it and the request wasn't within agreed hours - does the IT team get rewarded or a bonus system? Where's the incentive?

 

Expectations - how you prioritise - institute wide - class - individual

 

That last-minute notice of things (like the 30 seconds I had the once an assembly venue had been changed) will be rejected?

 

Ticket logging requirements - what needs to be included

 

Can tickets be rejected due to lack of information then? Can they be put on hold until the required information is provided?

 

 

I see your argument for both sides don't get me wrong. But an IT SLA in a school lacks the flexibility that IT staff get used to in schools e.g. so if the Head tells us we've got a new starter tomorrow can you set them up, do we say no and then it's tough as they didn't follow the SLA? OR should we treat that as top priority, drop everything else and get it done?

 

Where's the incentive if we do (from both sides)?

Do we get a cash bonus, half a day off on a Friday or something?

 

In my experience - No. This is why IT in schools is suffering. IT isn't given the support, funding, resources or staff we need just to keep the lights on. Yet we have to constantly work our magic.

Edited February 20, 2019 by DrBeaker

[blue_n_white]

As previously said - £40k is not as generous as it may seem.

 

We have around 1100 students and 160 staff and with all our subscriptions: MS, Adobe, Veeam, NetSupport, SIMS licensing etc are already at £39k.

 

What exactly is coming out of the £40k - telephones? broadband? filtering? What licenses do you currently spend on?

Telephony is from a different budget

 

Broadband and Filtering is from a different budget

 

The only licenses that need to be purchased from this budge come to approximately £6k

[blue_n_white]

An SLA can help give clarity to both the school and your IT staff. Written well it can be provide a team not only direction and a sense of purpose but also with some protection and push back if issues are being perceived by the management / staff.

 

In the past I've written SLAs with the following contents:

 

Service Details - an overview of the services you'll provide and how. Will you be undertaking A/V, in class support, etc.

How will work be logged - ticket system only, outside is not monitored to SLA

When - Hours 8 to 4 weekdays, term time only?

Expectations - how you prioritise - institute wide - class - individual

KPIs - What will be measured and what will be the target

Prioritisation - Levels / target response times. Definitions of terms

Guidance to users - e.g Availability of end users when troubleshooting

Ticket logging requirements - what needs to be included

What information will be given to user - ticket number and priority

How the user will be kept up to date

Escalating any issues - How this can be done

Limitations of service - Personal devices, equipment / software purchased without consultation (lowest priority / no guarantees), malicious damage, failing to follow guidance - good data practice, software support. etc. etc.

Review mechanism - How often, who.

 

If you can get management buy in and agreement on how you will work, what will be considered as acceptable behaviour from users then you can use an SLA like a contract. Clear expectations from both parties.

 

You don't have to see an SLA as stick you'll get beaten with. If you're not meeting the targets, why? Do you have the resources, funding, cooperation, support that you need to delivery the agreed services?

Thanks for the guidance

[Ditto]

Probably going too deep.... but have a look at https://www.intercai.co.uk/pdf/The_problem_with_SLAs.pdf. There is an absolute golden nugget in the conclusion. Consider getting the IT team to write the first draft of the SLA if you have one. Unless you do have an agreement, it won't be an SLA.

One worry I have is even with an agreed SLA, it tends to reiterate the concept of a service provided to a customer. That's all well and good when you have a contract with a third party, but when this is required for one set of employees against another set of employees, that presumably are paid by the same employer, it suggests there is a more fundamental organisational issue. Do SLA's exist between other groups of people in the school. Anecdotally, when I worked in an all-through school, that had primary first then secondary, quite a few issues existed between the different factions within the educational teams. Even Ofsted picked up on it. All though not entirely solved, some team building and collaboration projects did have a positive impact.

Edited February 22, 2019 by Ditto

[localzuk]

Thanks for the suggestion, I was looking at using a measure of how many people are affected.

I feel that the IT support team is providing a service to internal customers, currently the customer service is viewed as unsatisfactory (based on feedback from support staff, teachers, SLT, office staff), lacks transparency for people generating tickets and for me as the person supporting them.

If someone feels the lack of progression within a school environment is a reason to become unmotivated, I would hope that they would have enough pride in their job and skillset to actually perform their job in a professional and timely manner and if we do not define what constitutes adequate performance (through an agreed SLA) then accountability will be enforced through soft targets rather than measurable targets. I think this will in the long term lead to stress for the IT team.

Are the admin team providing a service to internal customers? How about the site team? Do they have SLAs/KPIs? Catering staff? Cleaners?

 

You touch on motivation - but you appear to be treating the IT team as a problem, rather than a part of the team. You are using language which almost seems to be a threat to them, because people have complained. This makes me think there is a serious "them and us" problem there as well.

 

To be honest, you seem to be approaching this in the wrong direction. You've settled on a solution - SLAs, but haven't sorted the cause. Customer service being viewed as unsatisfactory does not always mean the customer service is unsatisfactory. It can mean a number of things - such as the staff being overworked (which could be down to the division of labour being wrong between staff, or down to some staff not having the training to be able to do more of the workload etc...), it could be down to the way requests are handled - are requests sent to a helpdesk? Are the IT team keeping staff up to date with what they've done on a ticket? Is the helpdesk sending too many automated emails, so staff are ignoring the actual replies as they perceive them all to be automated?

 

It can be one of simply not seeing IT staff enough - lots of things can be fixed from the IT desk nowadays, and don't all require a classroom visit, but this can give a perception of IT staff never being seen etc...

 

So, I'd suggest that instead of SLAs, how about looking at the root cause of the dissatisfaction?

 

You mention lacking transparency for people generating tickets, and you supporting them? What do you mean by this? Are you attempting to micromanage what the team does? Do you need to know every issue? Do people with issues need to know every detail of what is being done to fix their problems? Do they expect that when they go to a hospital or get their car repaired? At a certain point you have to accept that IT support is a complex job, and as such sometimes you don't need to know every detail. From what I'm getting, you don't appear to be IT staff, so why would you expect to know everything they're doing?

 

SLAs/KPIs have their place - I have a vague internal document for my team which outlines a sort of SLA but it is a guide for us to use internally to allow us to prioritise things better. If I were to release that document to our staff across the trust, it'd be a matter of hours before someone tried to use it as a weapon against the team, because they don't get to see the bigger picture of what is going on in the team. Which is completely the wrong way to fix perceptions.

 

Also, on a related note, you mention the budget of £40k. That figure means very little without knowing what it is for, and how much equipment the school has. I would suggest documenting every bit of kit the school has, figuring out a reasonable working life for each bit of kit, and then putting it all in a spreadsheet by year. You can then get an idea of what the budget should actually be - based on the needs of kit getting old. If you expect to add more provision, include this in the spreadsheet. I get about £160k a year for IT, to cover 6 schools and it includes telephone systems, internet provision etc... So, £40k could very well look like a decent amount, but when you actually put it all in a spreadsheet, you won't see if its actually adequate.

Edited February 22, 2019 by localzuk

[blue_n_white]

Are the admin team providing a service to internal customers? How about the site team? Do they have SLAs/KPIs? Catering staff? Cleaners?

 

You touch on motivation - but you appear to be treating the IT team as a problem, rather than a part of the team. You are using language which almost seems to be a threat to them, because people have complained. This makes me think there is a serious "them and us" problem there as well.

 

To be honest, you seem to be approaching this in the wrong direction. You've settled on a solution - SLAs, but haven't sorted the cause. Customer service being viewed as unsatisfactory does not always mean the customer service is unsatisfactory. It can mean a number of things - such as the staff being overworked (which could be down to the division of labour being wrong between staff, or down to some staff not having the training to be able to do more of the workload etc...), it could be down to the way requests are handled - are requests sent to a helpdesk? Are the IT team keeping staff up to date with what they've done on a ticket? Is the helpdesk sending too many automated emails, so staff are ignoring the actual replies as they perceive them all to be automated?

 

It can be one of simply not seeing IT staff enough - lots of things can be fixed from the IT desk nowadays, and don't all require a classroom visit, but this can give a perception of IT staff never being seen etc...

 

So, I'd suggest that instead of SLAs, how about looking at the root cause of the dissatisfaction?

 

You mention lacking transparency for people generating tickets, and you supporting them? What do you mean by this? Are you attempting to micromanage what the team does? Do you need to know every issue? Do people with issues need to know every detail of what is being done to fix their problems? Do they expect that when they go to a hospital or get their car repaired? At a certain point you have to accept that IT support is a complex job, and as such sometimes you don't need to know every detail. From what I'm getting, you don't appear to be IT staff, so why would you expect to know everything they're doing?

 

SLAs/KPIs have their place - I have a vague internal document for my team which outlines a sort of SLA but it is a guide for us to use internally to allow us to prioritise things better. If I were to release that document to our staff across the trust, it'd be a matter of hours before someone tried to use it as a weapon against the team, because they don't get to see the bigger picture of what is going on in the team. Which is completely the wrong way to fix perceptions.

 

Also, on a related note, you mention the budget of £40k. That figure means very little without knowing what it is for, and how much equipment the school has. I would suggest documenting every bit of kit the school has, figuring out a reasonable working life for each bit of kit, and then putting it all in a spreadsheet by year. You can then get an idea of what the budget should actually be - based on the needs of kit getting old. If you expect to add more provision, include this in the spreadsheet. I get about £160k a year for IT, to cover 6 schools and it includes telephone systems, internet provision etc... So, £40k could very well look like a decent amount, but when you actually put it all in a spreadsheet, you won't see if its actually adequate.

I would say yes the admin, site management, catering are providing a service to internal customers and all have a clear structure within which to measure performance and reinforce accountability. The IT support team do not.

 

I am looking for the SLA to provide a structure to enable us to measure the performance of the IT team and give them clear and measurable targets that are transparent and to avoid issues such as "Why has this not been done by now" by allowing them to prioritise and allocate jobs to members and give me as the line manager an overview of what they are doing and where there is underperformance to be addressed and where credit is due. It will also avoid them having to deal with vague targets that can be used against them.

 

The lack of transparency is simple, when an email is sent to the helpdesk by a member of staff rarely is a reply sent showing that a solution is being worked on, there is a lack of transparency about which problems of recurring regularly and which are not, there is a lack of transparency about when a problem is partially solved or needs more time to be done, there is a lack of transparency of when actions were taken and how long things like deploying hardware such PCs/tablets will be take.

 

It has become obvious from the constructive/helpful comments on this thread (of which there are many) that the SLA can also be a document to reinforce the role other staff have to play in making sure that things are reported correctly and in a timely manner, I'm sure this will be helpful to IT team, rather than micromanaging them.

 

I have asked the IT team to take part in the process and they have resisted, I could conceivably impose a SLA, instead I have turned to IT professionals to help formulate a supportive SLA rather than impose one with targets I would like to see. I see this as a supportive measure, if I wanted a weapon I would not be asking for advice on the approach to take.

[GrumbleDook]

To be honest, you seem to be approaching this in the wrong direction. You've settled on a solution - SLAs, but haven't sorted the cause. Customer service being viewed as unsatisfactory does not always mean the customer service is unsatisfactory. It can mean a number of things - such as the staff being overworked (which could be down to the division of labour being wrong between staff, or down to some staff not having the training to be able to do more of the workload etc...), it could be down to the way requests are handled - are requests sent to a helpdesk? Are the IT team keeping staff up to date with what they've done on a ticket? Is the helpdesk sending too many automated emails, so staff are ignoring the actual replies as they perceive them all to be automated?

 

I can appreciate what you are saying but what if we all started from the basis that having an SLA is a target ... a bit like a mountain to climb.

 

The purpose could be a range of things ... basically a vision statement.

If climbing a mountain it could be to prove physical and mental strength, it could be to be the first at something... or simply because it is there.

 

A vision for a support team could be to ensure a smooth running IT infrastructure and systems to allow teachers to teach, pupils to learn and the school to run. It could be more business orientated ... to deliver required services through efficiency and control (these are both paraphrased from real examples ... and get which one is BSF related).

 

Either way, the SLA is an end goal at this point.

 

So you can either look at the industry / sector examples and work out are they achievable for you ... do you need to tweak them or do you need to change how the team works to hit them.

 

In reality, it is a hybrid ...

 

Is there a collected set of SLAs which schools have? How did each school put them together? Are they based on fix /

resolution times, on comms times or both?

 

There have been some good discussions on this so far, but can members actually state what their SLAs are?

[Ditto]

... but can members actually state what their SLAs are?

 

To be honest, no I can't ever recall seeing one. I've seen many targets for individual performance management, but never seen a team/departmental SLA within a school, so I too would be interested to review any that exist. One thing outside of school that irks me with commercial SLA's is where there is no action or consequence to failure to meet the SLA's. I guess the one place I do know where it has an impact, is South West Trains compensation when they fail to meet their SLAs.

[blue_n_white]

To be honest, no I can't ever recall seeing one. I've seen many targets for individual performance management, but never seen a team/departmental SLA within a school, so I too would be interested to review any that exist. One thing outside of school that irks me with commercial SLA's is where there is no action or consequence to failure to meet the SLA's. I guess the one place I do know where it has an impact, is South West Trains compensation when they fail to meet their SLAs.

I would be reluctant I think to put in a consequence for a failure to meet SLAs, I would rather use it as a basis for a discussion on where an improvement is needed and how this improvement can be achieved, as many have said, there is a need to for flexibility within a school setting and I think not having penalties/conseuqences for not meeting SLAs would help to achieve that flexibility.

[blue_n_white]

I can appreciate what you are saying but what if we all started from the basis that having an SLA is a target ... a bit like a mountain to climb.

 

The purpose could be a range of things ... basically a vision statement.

If climbing a mountain it could be to prove physical and mental strength, it could be to be the first at something... or simply because it is there.

 

A vision for a support team could be to ensure a smooth running IT infrastructure and systems to allow teachers to teach, pupils to learn and the school to run. It could be more business orientated ... to deliver required services through efficiency and control (these are both paraphrased from real examples ... and get which one is BSF related).

 

Either way, the SLA is an end goal at this point.

 

So you can either look at the industry / sector examples and work out are they achievable for you ... do you need to tweak them or do you need to change how the team works to hit them.

 

In reality, it is a hybrid ...

 

Is there a collected set of SLAs which schools have? How did each school put them together? Are they based on fix /

resolution times, on comms times or both?

 

There have been some good discussions on this so far, but can members actually state what their SLAs are?

 

Thanks for the comment, I like the idea of it being a vision statement of where we want to go and to use an SLA as a way of identifying next steps/improvements that can be made.

[GrumbleDook]

To be honest, no I can't ever recall seeing one. I've seen many targets for individual performance management, but never seen a team/departmental SLA within a school, so I too would be interested to review any that exist. One thing outside of school that irks me with commercial SLA's is where there is no action or consequence to failure to meet the SLA's. I guess the one place I do know where it has an impact, is South West Trains compensation when they fail to meet their SLAs.

 

Don’t punish on SLAs. However do use KPIs to identify areas for change.

KPIs can be quantitative or qualitative, and so look at both averages of times to respond / fix / etc. and look at how people feel about how it was handled.

 

Failure to adapt and change by individuals is an issue to be addressed by training, mentoring, targets and, ultimately, action. This has to be achievable and reasonable. Anything else goes towards constructive dismissal.

[DrCheese]

An SLA is the wrong way to go about it.

 

I sit with my team one on one on Monday's and go through the service desk with them - This way I ensure that all jobs are at least replied to on a regular basis, even if it's just a "We're still waiting for this order to be approved/arrive" - I then set them targets that I want done by the end of the week and we review the following week. Of course I also assign jobs/ask them to do this in the meantime, but it's helpful having a recorded list of targets per week. It also lets me bring up any concerns early & address them. It also lets them do the same

 

 

Manage them properly rather than slapping them with a rigid SLA. If you want strong KPIs/SLA then you're only going to get that by outsourcing them and you *will* pay heavily for it.

Edited February 22, 2019 by DrCheese