Service Reviews

To ensure optimum service provisioning, it is imperative that you periodically review all service agreements and take appropriate corrective actions if needed. To achieve this, every agreement has fields to specify the Review Date of the agreement, the Next Service Review Date, and the frequency with which the service review should take place.

Generally, actual Service Level Agreements should be reviewed at least once per year with the signatories of the agreement. This is to ensure that the agreement is still valid, business requirements have not changed, or organization capabilities have note been extended or increased.

Additionally, service reviews, which are distinct from the agreement review, should occur more frequently. Service reviews are often held quarterly, and use quantifiable data to ensure that all agreements are fulfilled, whether between your organization and your customer (e.g. Service Level Agreements), within the various departments of your organization (e.g. Operational Level Agreements) or between your organization and a third party (e.g. Underpinning Contracts).

Service reviews produce the following two types of output:

• Service improvement plans (SIPs)
• Service quality plans (SQPs)

Service improvement plans are usually the result of regularly monthly meetings and are limited in scope. They usually describe short term fixes. In contrast, service quality plans are usually long term strategies to provide better service over months or years. For example, an organization may find that their employees require more comprehensive technical training, the results of which become apparent much later.