RE: Ever seen a service level agreement for a tech pubs department?

["Lisa Wright" <lisawright -at- mail -dot- utexas -dot- edu>]

Milan,
We have way too many possible scenarios and inputs to address, so we don't
have an all-encompassing SLA. But we have guidelines for responding, and
certain types of things we do have a well-documented agreements that we have
to stick to or we hear about it.

For example:

* Changes to policies and other security standards, published within one
week
* Maintenance notices published within 24 hours
* Unplanned downtime notices published within 15 minutes
* 4 hours prior to us sending a notice to a constituent group, we notify the
help desk. If we can't meet that timeframe due to urgency, we walk over
there in person and notify them.
* Close or otherwise resolve trouble-tickets that come to us through the
help desk within 2 weeks.
* All requests receive acknowledgement, and we are implementing a request
system that people can view to see the status of their request.

I saw where someone else has a "never say no" policy. Without arguing the
details of that particular person's approach (or advocating the benefits of
saying no without seeming to), I will say that if you have a large volume of
work, you can get into trouble if you hop on everything immediately and
don't manage the priorities within your queue. We got into a mess where we
were super responsive to others' needs and never made room for our own
projects (CMS, what have you). We've made a lot of headway in that regard,
but it was very difficult to do and we still struggle.

HTH,
Lisa

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lisawright=mail -dot- utexas -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lisawright=mail -dot- utexas -dot- edu -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Milan Davidovic
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 8:44 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Ever seen a service level agreement for a tech pubs department?

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 7:49 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin
<Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> It all depends on your industry. Probably aircraft- and medicine-related
> industries have some strict standards in that regard, and therefore the
> companies budget for the implied additional overhead.

The industry where I'm watching this starting to happen is just such
an industry. But I'm interested in any first-hand (or second-hand)
accounts of developing or working under an SLA, regardless of
industry.

The advice is welcome too, of course. But if anyone has a good
narrative, I'm all ears, er, eyes...

Thanks all.

-- 
Milan Davidovic
http://altmilan.blogspot.com
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ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
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HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
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authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
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