Common challenges with SLA's: Challenge #1 - Standardization

[#1]

With this post, I'm kicking off a short series on common challenges related to SLAs based on insights we gathered during research for our SLA Time Management app 📚

Let’s start with the first challenge: Standardization🛠️

Here are some of the most common problems users experience:

• Everyone tracks SLAs their own way

• Teams don’t know what to prioritize

Jira Service Management does a great job when you're setting up SLAs within a single project - clear goals, calendars, and conditions. It all works smoothly!

But when your processes start crossing team boundaries, things get complicated.
Multiple service desks, dev teams, product managers, and operations - each working in their own Jira areas.

And when you want to track SLAs across all these teams, each living in their own Jira projects, consistency becomes almost impossible.

That’s why standardized SLA management isn’t just "nice to have" - it’s critical when your processes grow.

💡What solution can be?

For example, having a centralized, cross-team SLA setup can really help. Not to replace Jira, but to build on top of it when your processes get more complex.

The result:

• A standardized view and centralized SLA management,
• No more switching between projects to create, manage, or find the right metrics.

💁‍♀️Challenge #1 - completed ✅🎉

[G subramanyam]

Hi @Weronika Hałdaś_Deviniti_ this is a fantastic topic to kick off your series on common SLA challenges, and you've absolutely nailed the first one: Standardization.

Looking forward to seeing what solutions you delve into for the next challenges in your series! This foundational problem of standardization truly underlines the need for tools that can provide that consolidated, cross-team perspective.

Good start :)

[__ Jimi Wikman]

I can't think of any organization that have team bound SLAs, so having SLAs on team level makes no sense. SLAs are based on products and services, and they are tied to contracts and product/service criticality for internal use.

SLAs should not just be standardized, they should be aligned across the organization towards what promises the organization actually have made and why. This so SLAs are aligned contractually because sales people without a clear SLA structure will make any weird promises, which cause all kind of issues when you try to align this in the tool...

I have a feeling that another challenge in this series is that SLAs are not used as a Service Level Agreement, but as a control and measure tool for all the wrong reasons...

[Weronika Hałdaś_Deviniti_]

Hi @G subramanyam 

I'm glad to hear that! I hope you'll enjoy the upcoming challenges as well😊

[G subramanyam]

@Weronika Hałdaś_Deviniti_ eager to read your further posts.