Confusing OLAs with SLAs

[ouette]

I have come across two organisations who have outsourced their IT services calling the service agreements with their internal business users 'OLAs', and those service agreements with their supppliers 'SLAs'. Both types of documents are SLAs; in the first case the IT department needs to deliver the agreed service to their own organisation, and in the second case, they need to ensure that their external suppliers are meeting the targets agreed with them.

These organisations did not have any OLA agreements which fitted the true intention of an OLA.

Is this confusion common?

It irritates me when I see this, but does it really matter what the organisation calls it's documents, so long as the contents state what they need to so that business needs are met?

What argument could be used to convince the organisation to stop calling their internal SLAs documents OLAs?

[UKVIKING]

First

Is the internal team a customer, a user or a part of the service

If the internal org team / department is an group that interacts in order to provide a service, then they are using the correct terminology

If the group is customers.. they are using it in correctly

I will inform the ITIL TLA Police department immediately


A SLA is a Service level agreement - it is between service provider and service consumer. It is used both for internal / external customers / users of a service
An OLA is an Operations (al) Level Agreement between departments within the same organization that together provide a service
An UC is between a company / service provider and the external vendors that help provide the service

It is NOT the end of the world if people call it all agreements and not use the ITIL Terminology. The fact that they are there is more important than the frigging terminology
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[KenLuo]

Agree with above, it's more important to have this in place rather than terminology.

In my organization, the OLA and SLA is exactly the same, as internally we also deliver the services to other partner systems. In order to make it easy, we use a single agreements for all interfaces.
_________________
Luo, Tian-Hong (Ken)
Regional Operation Lead

ITIL Expert Certified

[ouette]

@ukviking. Thanks for the confirmation on termininology.

I agree that it is more important for agreements to be in place rather than what they are called....

So don't shoot me down for my next question

I also know that there is no such thing as ITIL certification for organisations. BUT sometimes an organisation wants an indication of whether or not they conform.

From the ITIL Official Introduction:

ITIL is a framework an organization conforms to, not complies with. There is a major difference between these two things and one that is often misunderstood. I understand this.

Conformity allows flexibility in the adaptation of practices within an organizational context while maintaining the overall structure of the framework. How do you understand 'maintaining the overall structure of the framework'? How does an organisation determine if they conform?

Ouette

[UKVIKING]

Ouette

No reason to shoot you

The Corporate certification is NOT ITIL

It is ISO20001. It is a recognized standard

There are 16 areas that have to be met which equate nicely with ITIL the curretn version

The trick / joke is that the ISO Certification is against a specific service so that if 1 service of 100 that you provide ... you will be able to attest ISO 20001 certification against that 1 service if you meet all of the 16 criteria

Check out ISO20001
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[UKVIKING]

ISO 20000 rather
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[24sa]

Simply for any organization-
SLA is with your customer to whom you are providng the services ultimately.
OLA is agrrements of your internals team with each other.
and UC is with your supplier and vendore.

The reason for using the three different term is the difference in specification of the these three aggrements. further explaining it--- SLA is with the customer, who is not much interested in the Technical term and all, what he wants that his is taking service from you, and how you can create value to him. Considering these things in his mind he signs an aggrement with organization. this specification varies when two party involved are your internal teams only.