SLAs often fail because they lack clear ownership and accountability. Without someone responsible for ensuring reliability, these agreements become static documents that don’t improve service quality. Here’s how to fix it:
Key takeaway: SLAs need active management, not just documentation. By assigning ownership, implementing SLOs, and automating processes, you can transform SLAs into tools for improving reliability and maintaining customer trust.
The divide between what Service Level Agreements (SLAs) promise and what they actually deliver often comes down to flawed service strategies. These aren't just theoretical issues - they result in real-world business struggles, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
SLAs frequently fall short due to unclear objectives and vague metrics, which leave teams scrambling to react rather than plan ahead.
"When SLAs lack clearly defined goals and measurable metrics, teams may not understand what is expected of them... This ambiguity leads to confusion among team members and inconsistent service delivery." - Alina Kurinna, Product Marketer, SaaSJet
A lack of effective breach tracking compounds the problem, delaying issue detection and turning minor problems into major incidents. Instead of focusing on prevention, teams are stuck firefighting. Adding to this, many organisations fail to implement automated escalation processes for overdue tasks, leading to slower resolutions and strained client relationships.
Traditional SLAs are another weak point - they tend to be static and fail to keep pace with changing business demands.
The numbers highlight the scale of the problem. While 86% of organisations include SLAs in contracts for 70% or more of their suppliers, only 7% have penalties in place for over 90% of those contracts. This shows that most SLAs lack real consequences, making enforcement ineffective.
Another common issue is decentralised communication, which causes teams to lose focus on their priorities.
On top of that, internal challenges like inadequate resources or training are frequent culprits behind SLA breaches. External factors, such as shifting customer needs or supply chain disruptions, can also wreak havoc on SLA performance. Unfortunately, many organisations are not agile enough to adapt quickly when these external pressures arise.
Without clear ownership and accountability, these shortcomings render SLAs little more than empty promises. And for SMBs, the consequences of these failures are magnified.
For SMBs, the accountability gap in SLAs is especially damaging. Unlike larger enterprises with dedicated teams to manage reliability, SMBs often lack the expertise and resources to handle the complexities of modern cloud infrastructure. When SLA breaches occur, smaller organisations don’t have the luxury of redundancy or backup systems to cushion the blow.
The customer impact is immediate. With 37% of customers leaving after just one bad experience and 52% expecting a response within an hour, even a single SLA failure can be catastrophic for SMBs trying to build their reputation.
The financial fallout goes beyond customer churn. Businesses that treat customer service as a growth driver see 3.5X more revenue growth. SLA failures not only hurt current revenue but also jeopardise future growth by eroding customer trust and loyalty.
SMBs also face challenges during peak periods, such as holiday seasons, product launches, or viral social media events. These moments can cause sudden traffic surges that strain systems. Without proper capacity planning or automated scaling, service quality can decline just when it matters most.
Modern cloud architectures add another layer of complexity. A typical SMB application might depend on a content delivery network, multiple microservices, third-party APIs, and managed databases. Each of these components comes with its own risks, but traditional SLA management often treats the entire system as a single entity. This approach wastes time identifying issues instead of following clear escalation procedures.
Additionally, SMBs often struggle to balance speed and quality, leading to technical debt that undermines reliability further. Limited visibility and reporting make it hard for leadership to justify investments in better monitoring tools, additional staff, or infrastructure upgrades. This creates a vicious cycle: poor SLA performance drives customer churn, reducing the revenue needed to make critical reliability improvements.
Making sure SLA commitments are met starts with assigning clear ownership. One of the biggest pitfalls for SMBs is assuming reliability will just "happen." Without someone clearly accountable, SLA promises can quickly lose meaning, with no one stepping up when things go wrong. The key? Build accountability structures that suit smaller teams. Here’s how to assign and maintain ownership effectively.
Every SMB needs someone who makes reliability their priority. That doesn’t mean hiring a full-time Site Reliability Engineer - most SMBs can’t afford that. Instead, pick someone from your current team to take on the role of a reliability champion. This person should blend technical expertise with an understanding of business priorities. They know how your systems operate and grasp the financial and reputational cost of downtime. Typically, this might be a senior developer, DevOps engineer, or technical lead who’s already familiar with handling production issues.
But here’s the catch: this champion needs real authority, not just responsibility. They should have the power to escalate problems, allocate resources during incidents, and make decisions about infrastructure changes. Their day-to-day responsibilities might include tracking SLA performance, coordinating incident responses, and spotting areas where reliability can improve. They also act as a bridge, ensuring the whole team stays aligned.
To set them up for success, you’ll need to define clear goals, schedule regular reviews, and give them the right tools. And most importantly, back them when they prioritise reliability - even if it means delaying a feature release.
Once you’ve identified your reliability champion, the next step is ensuring they’re supported by strong collaboration across teams.
Reliability is not a one-person job. It takes teamwork across development, operations, and business functions. The challenge? Creating shared accountability while keeping individual responsibilities clear. Start by aligning everyone with shared goals. When developers see how their code impacts customer satisfaction, and business teams understand how reliability ties directly to revenue, they’re more likely to commit to the necessary monitoring and infrastructure improvements.
Successful organisations show that effective collaboration leads to quicker issue resolution and clearer accountability. For that to happen, you’ll need well-defined escalation paths between teams. For example, when a developer deploys a change that affects performance, operations should be notified immediately. Similarly, if customer support spots recurring issues, their feedback should go straight to the development team. These connections help catch small problems before they snowball into SLA breaches.
Beyond technical collaboration, leadership buy-in is essential to keep everything moving in the right direction.
Leadership plays a pivotal role in making reliability a priority. Executives need to see reliability not just as a technical concern, but as a business necessity - one that directly impacts customer loyalty, revenue, and market competitiveness.
This starts with allocating resources appropriately. Reliability efforts need funding and time, and leaders must ensure these are available. Transparency is also key: regularly share reliability metrics and show how proactive investments can prevent expensive incidents down the line.
Leadership isn’t just about providing resources - it’s about setting the tone. Leaders must push for reliability even when there’s resistance. They need to reinforce the idea that reliability is fundamental to the company’s success.
"Ownership requires trust, and it is up to leaders to establish and maintain that trust."
- James Hicks, Engineering Director
Creating psychological safety is equally important. The reliability champion should feel safe raising concerns without fear of blame. When issues like technical debt or infrastructure weaknesses come up, leadership should listen and act. Mistakes should be treated as opportunities to learn, not reasons for punishment.
Finally, set measurable goals that tie reliability to business outcomes. Track these metrics consistently and celebrate team wins when milestones are achieved. By aligning reliability efforts with broader business objectives, leadership ensures these initiatives remain a long-term priority.
Once you've established clear accountability, the next step is to translate SLA promises into actionable, daily targets. This is where Service Level Objectives (SLOs) come into play. SLOs act as the bridge between the commitments outlined in your SLA and the day-to-day operations. Without them, an SLA risks becoming nothing more than a static document, with no practical way to track or improve performance.
While SLAs are formal agreements that define service expectations and responsibilities, SLOs are the measurable performance targets set within those agreements. SLAs carry legal weight and often include penalties for non-compliance, whereas SLOs serve as internal benchmarks to guide operational success.
For instance, your SLA might guarantee customers 99.9% uptime, but you could set your SLO slightly higher - say, 99.95% - to create a buffer. This proactive approach allows your team to address potential issues before they impact customers.
SLOs also offer flexibility. Unlike SLAs, which require formal renegotiation to adjust, SLOs can be fine-tuned as conditions change. This adaptability is especially useful for small and medium-sized businesses that need to respond quickly to shifting demands. Additionally, while SLAs often focus on broad, customer-facing metrics like uptime, SLOs tend to zero in on more technical aspects, such as response times or error rates.
Take this example: a streaming service might set an SLO to ensure buffering times stay under 3 seconds for 99% of users, while its SLA guarantees 99.99% availability with service credits for any breach. Here, the SLO provides the internal team with precise targets to monitor, while the SLA communicates reliability commitments to customers.
"Define the lowest level of reliability that you can get away with for each service, and state that as your SLO."
– Jay Judkowitz and Mark Carter, Google Product Managers
To implement SLOs effectively, focus on a practical and balanced approach. Start with 2–3 key metrics rather than trying to monitor every possible detail. Overloading your team with too many metrics can lead to alert fatigue and distract from what truly matters.
Set realistic goals based on recent performance data. For example, if your system has been achieving 99.5% availability, jumping directly to 99.9% may set you up for failure. Instead, aim for an incremental improvement, such as 99.6%, and raise the bar gradually as your team and systems grow more capable.
It's also important to create a buffer between your SLOs and SLAs. If your SLA promises 99.9% uptime, setting your internal SLO higher - at 99.95%, for instance - gives you room to detect and resolve issues before they impact customers. This buffer helps account for measurement discrepancies and provides extra time for troubleshooting.
Choose metrics that genuinely reflect user satisfaction and operational health. Focus on indicators like response times for web applications or error rates for APIs - metrics that provide actionable insights, rather than vanity metrics that merely look good on a dashboard.
"100% is the wrong reliability target for basically everything."
– Benjamin Treynor Sloss, VP 24×7, Google
Defining SLOs should involve collaboration between reliability experts, product owners, developers, and operations teams. Everyone should understand what’s being measured, why it matters, and what happens if targets aren’t met - whether that means pausing new feature development or escalating issues to leadership.
Finally, revisit your SLOs regularly to ensure they still align with your business goals and customer needs. What worked a few months ago might no longer be sufficient as your systems evolve or your user base grows.
Once your SLOs are in place, the next step is to ensure they’re backed by robust alerts and continuous monitoring.
Even the best SLOs are useless without proper alerts. Automate your monitoring processes - manual tracking isn’t sustainable in the long run. Your monitoring system should continuously track Service Level Indicators (SLIs), which provide measurable insights into how well your SLOs are being met.
A key concept here is the error budget, which defines the allowable margin for service degradation. For example, a 99.9% availability target over a month leaves very little room for downtime. Monitoring how quickly your error budget is being consumed can help you identify problems early and take corrective action.
Set up alerts with both short (e.g., 5 minutes) and long (e.g., 1 hour) look-back windows. This layered approach ensures that both sudden incidents and slower-developing issues are detected promptly. Additionally, configure alerts to flag rapid error budget usage, so you can act before the budget is entirely consumed.
Don’t forget to account for planned maintenance in your monitoring. Excluding these time windows ensures that scheduled downtime doesn’t unfairly impact your error budget.
Modern tools can simplify these processes. For example, Google Cloud’s Cloud Monitoring provides robust features like an SLO API and error budget tracking, while AWS CloudWatch Application Signals offers intuitive dashboards and alarms to help manage SLOs effectively.
Finally, establish a clear process for responding to error budget breaches. This ensures that even if an alert goes off at 2 a.m., your on-call team knows exactly how to escalate the issue and restore service reliability.
"If you have no SLOs, toil is your job."
– Perry Lorier, Google CRE
"Picking the wrong number is better than picking no number."
– SRE.Google
Strong SLOs and effective monitoring are essential, but the real foundation of reliability lies in fostering shared accountability across the organisation. A culture of reliability means every team member is committed to maximising service availability. This transformation begins with leadership setting clear expectations and creating an environment where teams feel safe discussing failures openly. Below are practical ways to embed this mindset into your organisation.
Blameless postmortems are a powerful tool for learning from failures and improving processes. Instead of pointing fingers, the focus is on understanding the systems and conditions that allowed the failure to occur. This approach encourages honest discussions and drives meaningful change.
Take Atlassian as an example. A few years ago, an engineer's syntax error in a configuration file caused a 45-minute outage across the company. Rather than punishing the engineer, Atlassian conducted a blameless postmortem. This led to the creation of an automated "will it start" check for configuration files, eliminating the need for manual intervention in the process. The engineer involved is still with the company today.
"When things go wrong, looking for someone to blame is a natural human tendency... We assume good intentions on the part of our staff and never blame people for faults. The postmortem needs to honestly and objectively examine the circumstances that led to the fault so we can find the true root cause(s) and mitigate them." – Atlassian's Incident Management Handbook
To ensure postmortems are effective, communicate their purpose clearly. Everyone should understand that these sessions are about learning and growth, not assigning blame. Build a detailed timeline of the incident to establish a shared understanding, and focus on "what" and "how" questions rather than "why" questions, which can lead to defensiveness. Document everything - from technical data to decisions made during the incident - and translate findings into actionable steps with clear ownership and deadlines. Without this follow-up, even the most insightful postmortem risks becoming a missed opportunity.
In addition to analysing incidents, regular reviews can help reinforce these practices.
Reliability isn't a one-time goal - it requires ongoing focus. Regular SLA and reliability reviews provide structured opportunities to evaluate performance, discuss near-misses, and identify risks before they impact customers. Depending on your service's complexity and incident frequency, these reviews might occur monthly or quarterly. They should include representatives from engineering, product, customer success, and leadership to ensure diverse perspectives.
During these reviews, assess SLA performance against SLOs, monitor error budget usage, and examine even minor incidents for warning signs. A reliability dashboard that tracks key metrics, incident trends, and improvement initiatives can provide visibility into how everyday efforts contribute to system stability. This transparency not only reinforces accountability but also ensures that achievements are celebrated with the same enthusiasm as lessons learned from failures.
Creating a culture of reliability takes more than good intentions - it requires aligning incentives with reliability outcomes. When performance metrics and rewards reflect reliability priorities, team members naturally focus on system stability and customer satisfaction.
For example, you could integrate reliability metrics into performance reviews and bonus structures. Research shows that employees who see a direct link between their efforts and company success are 3.5 times more likely to feel engaged in their roles. Developers could be evaluated on how their code impacts reliability, product managers might balance feature delivery with system stability, and operations teams could shift their focus from reactive firefighting to proactive improvements. Offering growth opportunities like incident response training, chaos engineering workshops, or cross-team projects further embeds reliability as a key skill.
"Incentive structures work, so you have to be very careful of what you incent people to do, because various incentive structures create all sorts of consequences that you can't anticipate." – Steve Jobs
Transparency is critical when designing these structures. With only 14% of lower-level employees understanding their company's goals, it's essential to ensure everyone knows how reliability fits into the broader mission and how their contributions matter.
Ultimately, aligning incentives isn't just about individual recognition - it's about creating an environment where prioritising reliability supports both personal growth and collective success.
To ensure clear accountability and actionable Service Level Objectives (SLOs), the right tools are essential for bringing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to life. These tools help transform SLAs into active frameworks for reliability, enabling real-time operationalisation. It's important to choose solutions that are straightforward, cost-effective, and compatible with your team's capacity and existing workflows.
A solid foundation for SLA management begins with robust monitoring that tracks both technical performance and its impact on business outcomes. For example, Datadog provides active SLA tracking through its API tests feature, costing roughly £4 per 10,000 test runs per month. If you're looking for open-source options, combining Prometheus for metrics collection with Grafana for visualisation can deliver excellent SLA tracking capabilities.
Key features to prioritise include real-time dashboards, automated alerts for potential SLO breaches, and historical trend reporting. Monitoring tools should also focus on customer-centric metrics, such as First Response Time (FRT) and Resolution Time, alongside organisational metrics like SLA Adherence Rate and Cost Per Resolution. These capabilities naturally align with efficient incident management practices, ensuring smooth handling of any issues that arise.
Incident management tools bridge the gap between detecting SLA breaches and resolving them quickly. Solutions like Freshworks Freshservice (starting at approximately £15 per agent per month) and Jira Service Management offer incident tracking combined with built-in SLA monitoring.
Effective frameworks include features like automated escalation, streamlined ticket routing, and audit trails to identify root causes. For instance, Santander Consumer Bank implemented 150 bots in production, saving over 30,000 hours in 2019 and approximately £1.5 million during a systems migration. Nina Moller, Process Owner at Santander Consumer Bank, summarised it well:
"RPA is not just automation. It's change management." – Nina Moller, Process Owner, Backoffice, Santander Consumer Bank
For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), integrating automated time tracking and notifications as SLA deadlines approach can be a game-changer. This proactive approach shifts the focus from reactive problem-solving to predictive reliability, helping to prevent breaches before they occur.
Automation plays a crucial role in reducing manual effort, improving accuracy, and speeding up response times. Tools can automatically generate service agreements, continuously monitor compliance, and produce detailed compliance reports. For example, Paessler PRTG Network Monitor offers a free version (up to 100 sensors) with paid plans starting at around £1,400, making it a great option for growing SMBs.
Some standout automation features include:
| Tool | SLA Tracking | Automation | Mobile App | Starting Price | Free Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freshservice | Yes | Yes | Yes | ~£15/agent/month | No |
| Jira Service Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Varies | Yes |
| Datadog API Tests | Yes | Yes | Yes | ~£4/10k tests | No |
| Spiceworks Cloud | Limited | Limited | Yes | Free | Yes |
Investing in dependable SLA management tools goes beyond operational efficiency - it directly impacts customer retention. Research shows that one-third of customers will stop doing business with a company after a single bad experience. The aim isn't to automate everything but to reach a state where SLA management becomes almost effortless. With automated systems handling routine tasks, your team can focus on interventions only when absolutely necessary.
A Service Level Agreement doesn’t have to gather dust as an overlooked document. The difference between an SLA that works and one that doesn’t lies in clear ownership and accountability.
To make your SLA a living, breathing part of your operations, consider these three practical shifts:
These strategies aren’t just theoretical - they’ve been proven in practice. For example, Netflix relies on real-time monitoring to ensure smooth streaming during peak hours, while Microsoft Azure uses automated alerts to instantly notify teams of data pipeline issues. And this isn’t just for the big players. Small and medium-sized businesses can adopt similar methods by leveraging affordable tools and straightforward processes. The result? Improved reliability, quicker incident resolution, and a solid framework for sustainable growth. By shifting from reactive problem-solving to proactive service management, your SLA can become a true business asset.
Start small: focus on one critical service, assign clear ownership, set up basic monitoring, and schedule regular reviews. With these steps, your SLA can transform from a mere compliance document into a tool that drives competitive success.
SMBs can improve reliability by making the most of their current resources and setting up clear processes. One way to do this is by identifying reliability champions within your team - those who can take on the responsibility of overseeing and enhancing service performance as part of their existing roles.
To make their job easier, consider using tools like Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). These tools automate infrastructure management, allowing your team to focus on reliability without needing advanced technical skills. Pair this with thorough documentation and clearly outlined responsibilities to ensure everyone knows their role and accountability is well distributed.
This strategy not only encourages a sense of ownership among team members but also keeps reliability at the forefront without requiring new hires. It’s a smart way for SMBs to grow while staying within their current resource limits.
SLAs and SLOs serve distinct but complementary purposes in maintaining service reliability. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are formal contracts that outline the expectations between a service provider and its customers. These agreements often include specific commitments, such as uptime guarantees, and may impose penalties if those commitments aren’t met. On the other hand, Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are measurable targets - like response times or availability - that define what constitutes reliable service and provide a framework for tracking performance.
SLOs bring SLAs to life by translating broad commitments into clear, actionable metrics. They allow teams to actively monitor service performance, spot potential issues early, and address them before they escalate. This approach ensures that SLAs move beyond being theoretical agreements and become practical tools for maintaining consistent, dependable service. By focusing on well-defined objectives, SLOs not only support operational efficiency but also build stronger customer trust and satisfaction.
Creating a sense of accountability and reliability within small teams, especially when resources are tight, calls for a practical and focused strategy. Start by defining roles and responsibilities with precision. Assign a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) to every task or project. This approach ensures clarity, encourages ownership, and keeps everyone accountable for their contributions.
Regular check-ins are crucial for fostering open communication. These meetings provide a space to discuss progress, address challenges, and maintain transparency. When team members feel heard and supported, trust naturally grows. Instead of aiming for sweeping changes, focus on making small, steady improvements. Celebrating these smaller milestones can uplift morale and maintain momentum.
Lastly, ensure the team is united by a shared vision of reliability. When everyone understands how their efforts align with the broader goals, it instils a sense of purpose and collective responsibility. Even with limited resources, this alignment can drive a strong sense of commitment and teamwork.