SLAME: a Service Level Agreements Method Elicitation

Resumo

IT service management (ITSM) is a set of processes aimed to support the design, operation and improvement of IT services. In ITSM context, service level management (SLM) is the process that specifically addresses the definition of IT services quality attributes (e.g. availability, performance, security), which are part of the service level agreements (SLAs) contracts signed between customers and providers. Nowadays, current approaches for SLAs specification, in ITSM context, are mostly based in best practices, supported by check-lists and templates. However, the utilisation of those artefacts is subjective in nature, and heavily dependent on practitioner’s experience, which makes SLAs elicitation procedures, difficult of being generalized and replicated in other organizations. To tackle this issue, we propose SLAME (SLA Method Elicitation), a blend of semiformal and formal approaches for IT services quality attributes set up in SLA contracts. SLAME is underpinned by a process modeling notation (BPMN), a metamodeling language (OCL), and a goal-oriented requirements engineering approach (KAOS). SLAME is also intended to bridge the gap between business and IT communities, by ensuring the traceability among business metrics (e.g. number of issued documents or clients assisted), IT services metrics (e.g. service availability, end-to-end response time) and IT infrastructure metrics (e.g. servers’ capacity, network performance).