What are the key components of a good SLA template?

While an SLA is often described as a document, it helps to think of it as more than this. It should be a tool for better IT service delivery and support that brings about better IT and business operations and outcomes.

My experience of SLAs is that they're most often used when the client is unhappy, when they're looking to get more from the provider or find out their rights to complain, escalate or even get out of a contract. So my personal view is that the aim of any provider is to provide a service so good the client never goes looking for the SLA in the first place. This means not just exceeding their service expectations but also ensuring they're aware of that through transparent reporting of both good and bad performance. Building enough trust with a client that they rely on you to flag failures means, again, they won't go looking for the SLA. In short, use the SLA for inspiration but give the client whatever they need not to go looking for it.

It's also worth remembering that there's often a dual meaning to "SLA." While best practices talk of SLAs as documents (please see my earlier point on this), the term "SLA" is also used by some to denote the service level targets (perhaps from within the SLA.) It's important to understand which version of "SLA" is in use.

I would add three key areas that in my experience are critical and are not mentioned: 1) Future roadmap: How might the service evolve and change over time and how will the SLA's be impacted and negotiated in the event of M&A or other structural changes? 2) Change: Few things stay immutable these days and the customer will be expecting support during changes. How are the expectations reflected in the SLA's? 3) The most critical time in which SLA's come to play is when there is service disruption or incidents. Be very clear on not just the SLA's but the the business impact, stakeholders, comms and roles & responsibilities In short, SLA's are important, but alignment from the top to the operational levels of the two organisations is critical

There is no such thing as a service that meets every consumer's expectations all the time. At some point, some consumers of a service, will perceive the service levels not adequately met. It is crucial, up front in an SLA, to set expectations. An SLA template must contain specificity on the exact services, scope, target performance range top and bottom, start & end times, duration, required maintenance windows, acceptable outage windows, resilience, interoperability specifications, dependencies, failure modes and compensating mechanisms, contacts, communications plans, & of course price / rate. Visibility & analytics should be described, because they're consumed by both the provider & consumer, to ensure sustained service performance.