session · cadence
Quarterly SLA review
60 minutes with the client. SLA performance walked: met / approached / breached. A contract conversation, not a sales conversation. Tighten where confidence grew; renegotiate where reality moved. The session that keeps the SLA a living promise.
When
- Quarterly — same week as the Quarterly portfolio review, often back-to-back.
- Calendar-locked at the start of the year — not negotiated each quarter.
Who
- PO — drives.
- Tech Lead — present; speaks to the technical side of SLO/SLA derivation.
- Client stakeholder — the contractual counterpart.
- (For larger engagements) the account owner or leadership.
Time-box
60 minutes. Long enough to walk each SLA dimension; short enough to keep the conversation contractual.
Inputs
- The current SLA document.
- Quarterly performance data per SLA category (availability, response time, resolution time, support response time, data integrity).
- Any breach records this quarter — with postmortems and remediation status.
- Any near-miss patterns (threshold approached but not crossed).
Agenda
| Time | What |
|---|---|
| 0–10 min | Re-read the SLA aloud. All five categories, with their current thresholds. The client hears the contract as written. |
| 10–30 min | Walk performance per category. Met / approached / breached. Specific numbers. If breached: postmortem reference; remediation status; recurrence risk. |
| 30–40 min | Three questions (canon): (1) Which SLAs were met consistently — can the target be tightened? (2) Which were approached or breached — what structural change prevents recurrence? (3) Are the categories still right — has the client's usage pattern moved? |
| 40–55 min | Negotiate adjustments. Tighten what's earned tightening. Adjust what reality has changed. Add categories the original contract didn't anticipate (e.g., a new critical flow that emerged). |
| 55–60 min | Sign the revised SLA (or confirm no change). Dated. Filed. Next review date confirmed. |
Outputs
- The revised SLA document — versioned. Old version archived; new version active from a named date.
- A short SLA-review note — what was reviewed, what changed, why.
- Any new SLO commitments the engineering team needs (since SLOs sit upstream of SLAs and need their own buffer).
What good looks like
The review is a contract conversation. Numbers, evidence, structural reasoning. "The submission p95 has held under 600ms for two quarters; we can tighten the SLA from <2s to <1.5s with confidence." That is the conversation.
The client experiences the review as trust-building. The team is honest about breaches (with remediation in hand), confident about tightening commitments where earned, and willing to renegotiate where reality has changed. That honesty is what makes the SLA a living document rather than a souvenir.
Anti-pattern
The SLA review becomes a sales conversation. The PO talks up performance to avoid awkwardness on near-misses; the client doesn't ask hard questions because the meeting feels celebratory. Fix: the review is structured around the three questions — they force the conversation into contract territory.
A second anti-pattern: never tightening. Performance has been ahead of SLA for four quarters; the team never offers to tighten; the SLA drifts from the client's actual expectations. Fix: if a category has been met consistently for two quarters, the team proposes the tightening. Tightening is a sign of maturity, not vulnerability.
A third: breaches without postmortem references. "Yeah we missed availability that one week" — no link, no remediation, no commitment. Fix: every breach has a postmortem reference and a remediation status. The client reads the link if they want; the team has done the structural work.
See also
- Canon — After We Build · The SLA · Helpdesk metrics and SLA review
- Area — SLA Review · SLA Definition · SLA Breach Protocol
- Checklist — SLA review · agenda
- Practice — SLA review
- Clinic — An SLA review that became sales
- Adjacent session — Quarterly portfolio review