SLA (Service Level Agreement)
An SLA is a defined commitment for the level of service a vendor will provide on an ongoing basis, typically stating response times, resolution times, and uptime targets.
In short
- States measurable commitments -- response time, resolution time, uptime -- not general quality intentions.
- Matters most for ongoing or retainer-style engagements, less for one-time project delivery.
- Usually tiered by severity: critical issues get faster response/resolution targets than low-priority ones.
- Should specify support hours and, ideally, the penalty or credit if the SLA is missed.
What a real SLA states
A usable SLA gives numbers, not adjectives: "critical incidents acknowledged within 1 hour, resolved within 4 hours, 24x7 support" rather than "prompt support." It also defines what counts as each severity tier, since "critical" means nothing without a shared definition of what qualifies.
Why it's easy to miss
SLAs are often assumed to be implicit in an ongoing engagement rather than explicitly written, especially when the SOW is focused on describing the initial build rather than the support period that follows it. That gap surfaces later, when an incident happens and neither side has an agreed standard for how fast a response should be.
How ScopeWise checks this
ScopeWise's PMO agent extracts whether an SLA is defined for the engagement, along with response time, resolution time, and support hours, and flags a missing SLA as an operational risk for any ongoing or retainer-style SOW.