OLA and SLA in Jira: how to simplify implementation [with templates]

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More customers + lower churn rate + better reputation + brand awareness = increased revenue. A happy customer is a key driver here.

It’s not easy to provide an outstanding client experience. There are a lot of items you need to arrange when caring about consumer expectations. Setting Service Level Agreement is a good place to start. In this article, we’ll cover SLA and OLA implementation in Jira. Step-by-step, you’ll understand how to act to improve your service quality.

SLA and OLA: What is the difference?

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) are components of Service Level Management (SLM). That is the process responsible for reducing any negative impact on service quality. 

Service level agreement (SLA) is an external commitment between a company and its customers. It’s a checklist of services and their quality that the provider should follow to ensure client satisfaction. Here it’s important to answer: Is my company delivering on what it promises?

 Operational Level Agreements (OLA) is a company-defined internal commitment for employees to achieve SLA. It specifies the roles, processes, duties, activities, and policies between different organization departments. Answer the question:  How should my company act to meet expectations?

 OLA aims to enhance SLA and to provide a clear understanding of:

• What will the server team do to satisfy customer expectations?
• How will the service desk deal with requests and incidents?
• How will different teams (development, QAs, support, security, etc.) interact?

 With OLA at work, you’ll be more confident your SLA will not be violated. Every employee will know what is expected by customers and how they should interact with each other.

Tips for creating SLA/OLA

• Shortly state the document’s aim (in 1-2 paragraphs)
• Make a list of all parties (individuals and businesses) involved in service level management
• Specify responsibilities of each person or department 
• Include specific details about possible challenges and how the OLA will help to solve them
• Describe the service operations in detail, including the hours of service
• Provide terms, conditions and authority of each party

SLA template in Jira

Both SLA and OLA are kinds of agreements that can be applied as checklists. It’s the most convenient form to use, as you’ll have all processes set step-by-step. 

If you’re looking for ready-to-use templates in Jira, check how you can arrange everything with Business Process Manager (BPM).  

Think about the structure of your template and how long should the template take. Then start creating a template using the business process designer.

1. Create a template and add all stages of your process to it.
2. Create a custom form using form builder.
3. Select the approvers for the fields that require it.
4. Add a project and assignee. If you selected multiple users, separate tasks will be created for all of them.
5. Set up regular process creation and automation of creation (if necessary), add restrictions for the template.

Once you start the process, an assignee gets an issue with the form needed to submit. 

If you added an approval after the form was submitted, the assignee will be changed to somebody who needs to add Approve or Reject reaction. 

If you need to save all the answers in a special place, get the Form submitted results in Excel format.

 Using the same steps, create a template for the OLA process and enjoy getting rid of routine work.

In summary, 

BPM for Jira Cloud is a powerful tool for managing standard processes in the company. It can be used for all departments. You can document all your workflows, business processes, and integral procedures as templates. Then, whenever you want to follow that process, you run a checklist from that template. For recurring tasks, checklists help with business efficiency by streamlining the process. Plus, you can keep human error at bay!

After installing the application, you will be able to use the existing templates of typical processes (including SLA). Try how you can adapt it to your standards. Starting SLA and OLA templates in Jira is one more step to improve your service quality.