Greetings!

This week's article is dedicated to is XLAs (eXperience Level Agreements) and will answer:

• What are they?
• Should you care?
• How can they be used?

What is an XLA?

A couple of quotes to start us off…

XLA is a powerful new addition to the traditional IT Service Level Agreement (SLA). One that builds on the SLA concept by measuring human sentiment and using this to break down silos and think and act from the perspective of a user. Source: Giarte.com

Xperience Level Agreement (XLA) is the concept of consensus between IT service provider and consumer regarding the desired human experience and business impact.

It is also an agreement that extends the scope of the output-oriented Service Level Agreement (SLA) to describe the collaboration, experience, and business impact associated with IT services – the outcome. This outcome-oriented document defines the agreed goals, metrics that indicate the achievement of the goals, and procedures for collaboration. Source: www.xlaconsortium.com

In my opinion, both of the above quotes work quite nicely.

An SLA is purely an objective measure based on metrics that are gathered from tools (ideally). It should be unimpeachable.

However, beware of watermelons… which is where your shiny SLA dashboard or report is a field of green, but your customer still isn’t happy! This usually signifies you are not measuring the right things.

An XLA is a combination of objective and subjective measures that give you a balanced measurement of the impact of the service, with a weighting towards how the “users” experience of the service.

Should you care?

Yes, yes you should… assuming that you are providing a service to a customer rather than a utility-type product that is positioned as being a “service”.

How can XLAs be used?

XLAs can be used in a number of ways.

• Drive a specific business outcome e.g. adoption of digital channels to drive quicker resolution for users
• Improve the relationship between supplier and consumer by measuring what actually matters to your customers and users
• Gauging the impact of a new supplier or service, so that improvements can be identified
• Measuring the end-user experience (UX) for one or more applications, as long as there is a subjective element to the measurement
• Impact of a change program

The possibilities are varied. The key is having the subjective measure as part of any XLA calculation, ideally captured in a consistent way e.g. using a user survey tool.

However, XLAs should not be used as a stick to beat a supplier of services. Rather they should be entered into as a joint exercise between the Service Provider and Customer to drive improvements.

In future posts I will be diving deeper into this space, so keep an eye open!