Establishing SLA’s for your team and your clients will set expectations and provide a benchmark for measuring results. I collected and analyzed project data over 12 to 24 months to better understand how we could optimize our creative output and also align skills and resources to the most requested project types.
I created this SLA worksheet that provided a detailed breakdown of activity and an average completion time for each requested project type. This was based on averages from data collected and recorded over the previous 12 to 24 months of projects.
Additionally, this detail helps significantly expose how internal teams do have overhead and our work is not free even though we work for an internal stakeholder. Upon attaching a cost ($100/hr was used in this example) to your project activity, it allows your stakeholders to evaluate their priorities prior to submitting requests for work.
Furthermore, this SLA also serves as a guide for your creative team and sets expectations for when items may be due and can take individual guess work out of project intake negotiations. This document is shared on a corporate WIKI and has been a valuable asset for all team members, seasoned and new.
There are always caveats to consider. Such as individual designers may be faster at some things and slower at others. Same goes for your stakeholders. Some may take longer to deliver feedback. We also experience increased work volume at certain times that may hinder the team’s ability to execute somewhere else. This is all data I collect and analyze. Thankfully, I have reached a point where I’m aware of these trends across the organization and my team. In these situations I’m able to proactively let the organization know that SLAs may be influenced do to certain factors and my stakeholders can plan accordingly.
My documents include SLAs for Design, Video, Web, and Content development with over 50 different project request types.