Real-world use cases: How teams use SLA Met vs Exceeded charts to improve service delivery

[#1]

SLA performance isn’t just about numbers — it’s about understanding what they tell you.

Are your teams consistently meeting expectations? Where are the bottlenecks? What’s working — and what’s not?

That’s where SLA Met vs Exceeded charts step in. These visual insights go beyond basic tracking to uncover trends and guide continuous improvement.

In this article, we’ll share real-world use cases that show how teams across industries are using SLA analytics in Jira to:

• Compare SLA outcomes across projects, priorities, teams, etc
• Identify risks before they turn into breaches
• Continuously optimize their workflows

Let’s explore how data can drive better decisions — and better results. 

Before we dive deeper, let’s first explore the different types of Service Level Agreements (SLA). This will help us later better understand the various teams that can benefit from using SLAs.

Key types of Service Level Agreements (SLA).

There are several types of SLAs, each designed to meet different customer service needs:

Customer-based SLA
An agreement between the company and a specific customer or group of customers, setting personalized support standards.
Example: A telecommunications company guarantees a certain level of service availability to its largest client.

Service-based SLA
This SLA defines standard support levels for all customers using a particular service or product.
Example: A company guarantees the same uptime commitment for all customers subscribed to its cloud platform.

Multilevel SLA
A more complex agreement that includes multiple layers, each addressing different customer groups or services.
Example: A company may have a corporate-wide SLA for all users, as well as additional agreements for premium clients.

Internal SLA
An agreement that defines service standards between departments or teams within the organization.
Example: The marketing team agrees to deliver a specific number of qualified leads to the sales team each quarter.

Understanding these types of SLAs helps teams manage expectations more effectively and ensure high-quality customer service across the organization.

🔎 What are Met vs Exceeded charts and how do they work?

Met vs Exceeded Charts are visual reports that show how effectively your team is meeting its SLA goals. They compare the number of issues that were resolved within the defined SLA time (Met) to those that exceeded the time limits (Exceeded).

Unlike basic statistics, these charts do more than just display numbers — they help you visualize SLA performance trends, assess efficiency across specific parameters, and filter the data based on key criteria that matter to your workflow.

Here’s how this chart works with the SLA Time and Report app.

The tool provides full support for Met vs Exceeded reporting, offering powerful capabilities to break down SLA performance by priority, issue type, team, service, and more.

📌 Use Case #1 — Support Teams: Identifying SLA risks by priority

“After analyzing the Met vs Exceeded chart, we discovered that our L2 support team had a 22% SLA breach rate, compared to just 4% in L1. This insight prompted us to rebalance workloads and deliver targeted training — and within a month, SLA compliance improved by 12%.”

In multi-tiered support environments, maintaining consistent SLA compliance across all levels—Level 1 (L1), Level 2 (L2), and Level 3 (L3)—is crucial. Each tier handles different complexities, and without clear visibility, it's challenging to ensure timely resolutions.

Met vs. Exceeded charts provide support teams with a visual representation of SLA adherence across these tiers, enabling them to identify patterns and address issues proactively.

How teams utilize this:

• Tier-specific analysis: By filtering SLA performance data by support level, teams can pinpoint which tier is experiencing the most SLA breaches. For instance, a higher breach rate in L2 might indicate the need for additional training or resources.
• Resource allocation: Understanding where SLA breaches occur allows managers to redistribute workloads effectively, ensuring that each tier operates within its capacity.
• Process improvement: Identifying recurring issues in specific tiers can highlight process inefficiencies, prompting reviews and optimizations to enhance overall support quality.

💎 Benefits:

• Enhanced visibility: Clear insights into SLA performance across support tiers facilitate informed decision-making.
• Improved customer satisfaction: Timely resolutions across all support levels lead to better customer experiences and trust.
• Operational efficiency: Proactive management of SLA breaches reduces escalations and ensures smoother support operations.

📌 Use Case #2 — Service Manager: Comparing team performance at a glance

For service managers overseeing multiple teams, one of the biggest challenges is identifying which teams consistently meet SLA targets — and which ones are falling behind. Manual reports and raw data often make it difficult to get the full picture.

How managers can use charts to uncover performance gaps:

By selecting “Assignee” or “Team” as reporting criteria, managers can instantly visualize SLA compliance for each group.

Teams with high “Exceeded” rates can be flagged for deeper analysis — they might be understaffed, overwhelmed, or handling more complex cases. Teams with strong “Met” performance can serve as internal benchmarks or models for best practices.

Why it’s valuable ❓

1. Objective performance comparison: Everyone sees the same numbers, clearly and fairly presented.
2. Data-driven decisions: Analytics help justify staffing adjustments, workload rebalancing, or structural changes.
3. Continuous improvement: Over time, patterns emerge that highlight process gaps or effective strategies worth scaling.

📌 Use Case #3 — Project Lead: Measuring the impact of process changes

“After updating our escalation policy for high-priority incidents, we used the Met vs Exceeded chart to compare SLA performance over the next 30 days. The breach rate dropped from 18% to 9%, validating that the new rules made a real difference.”

When a team introduces a new workflow or updates escalation rules, one of the first questions that comes up is:

Did it actually improve anything?

After implementing changes — such as SLA goal adjustments, updated priorities, or modified issue routing — project leads use the chart to track SLA performance before and after the change.

By comparing time periods or filtered issue sets, they can quickly identify trends:

1. Has the percentage of Met SLAs improved?
2. Have breach rates dropped?
3. Is the impact consistent across different priorities or teams?

If SLA breaches decrease after the change, that’s solid evidence that the new process works. If not, it’s a clear signal that further refinement is needed.

Additionally, this kind of analysis supports data-driven retrospectives, giving teams more confidence in continuous improvement efforts. Instead of relying on gut feeling, project leads can present real numbers — both to the team and to stakeholders.

⚙️ How to create and customize these charts

With the SLA Time and Report app, you can quickly configure Met vs Exceeded per Criteria charts to visualize how well your team is meeting SLA targets across different dimensions — whether it’s by priority, issue type, team, or custom fields that reflect your business logic.

These charts help you go beyond general SLA metrics and answer more specific questions, like:

 👉Which teams are consistently exceeding SLAs?

👉 Are high-priority incidents being resolved on time?

👉 Do different request types have different breach trends?

You can build your chart using any Jira field or custom field. Here’s a quick guide to commonly used options:

• Priority – See how SLA performance varies across urgency levels (e.g., Critical vs. Low).
• Issue Type – Track which types of issues (e.g., Bugs, Incidents, Tasks) are more likely to breach SLAs.
• Assignee / Team – Evaluate individual or team-level performance and compare workloads.
• Organization – For Jira Service Management users, analyze SLA metrics per client or partner.

You can also filter by project, SLA goal, or date range to make the chart even more focused and relevant.

📊 Add charts to your Jira Dashboard

Once you’ve created your chart, you can:

• Click “Add to Dashboard” to instantly create a Jira gadget
• View real-time SLA trends right on your Jira home screen
• Monitor SLA health daily without switching contexts

---

Summing up

Tracking SLAs is just the beginning.

To truly improve service delivery, teams need to analyze SLA data — not just measure it.

Let’s hear from you:

• How do you analyze SLA performance in your team?
• Which criteria matter most in your day-to-day reporting?

Try SLA Time and Report for Jira and turn your SLA data into meaningful action.

Start making smarter, faster, and more informed decisions — powered by insights you can trust. 🚀

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Thanks for sharing, @Alina Kurinna _SaaSJet_ ! this is a great article. Do these reports leverage AI?

[Alina Kurinna _SaaSJet_]

@Carlos Garcia Navarro, Thank you for the kind words. I’m really glad I could be helpful!
At the moment, AI isn’t being used in these reports, but I believe it will be in the future.