Service Contract Data Object

Purpose

The Service Contract data object describes the service characteristics and supports service measurement tracking, governance, and audit. Service Contracts can be related to logical services as well as physical services. Service Contracts related to logical services are known as Service Contract templates, while Service Contracts related to physical services are known as Service Contract instances. Each Service Contract data object is comprised of two main parts: the General Contract definitions (aka the header) and the SLOs (the line items), which also enable the nesting of other Service Contracts that define service levels for different aspects of the service. These lines may need to be detailed due to the service being composed of multiple components, because there are multiple providers involved, or to cover different areas of service levels.

Key Attributes

The Service Contract data object shall have the following key data attributes:

  • Id: unique identifier of the Service Contract

  • Name: name of the Service Contract

  • Type: type of the Service Contract (SLA, OLA, UC)

  • Provider: provider of the service

  • Consumer: consumer of the service

  • Start Date: start date/time of the Service Contract

  • End Date: end date/time of the Service Contract

  • Support Calendar: contracted support hours of the service

  • Adherence Calculation Periodicity: service measurement calculation period

  • Maintenance Window: service maintenance timeframes/blackout periods

Key Data Object Relationships

The Service Contract data object shall maintain the following relationships:

  • Incident to Service Contract (n:m): the service level which applies to an Incident is dependent on the related Service Contract(s)

  • Actual Product Instance to Service Contract (1:n): relationships to Actual Product Instance(s) are maintained and updated to ensure component and data object traceability in the value stream

  • Service Contract to KPI (n:m): KPIs will track the measurements associated with Service Contracts; Service Contracts will have multiple KPIs

  • Subscription to Service Contract (1:1): once a Subscription is instantiated, it also triggers the instantiation of a Service Contract instance from the Service Contract template