An internal IT department agrees with the internal network team that network faults affecting the payroll service will be picked up within 15 minutes. There is no external party involved. What is this agreement normally called?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 7. Seven ITIL practices in detail hard
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The options
Correct An operational level agreement
Correct. An OLA is an agreement between the service provider and another part of the same organization that supports delivery of a service.
Not correct A service level agreement
An SLA is the customer-facing agreement between the service provider and the customer of the service. This agreement is internal to the provider organization and supports the SLA rather than being one.
Not correct An underpinning contract
An underpinning contract is with an external supplier. The scenario states explicitly that no external party is involved.
Not correct A service level requirement
A service level requirement is a customer need expressed before an agreement exists — an input to negotiation, not a commitment between internal teams.
Why
Three commitments are easy to confuse. The SLA is with the customer. The operational level agreement is with another internal group whose work underpins the SLA. The underpinning contract is the equivalent commitment obtained from an external supplier. A service level requirement is not an agreement at all — it is the stated need that an agreement is later negotiated against.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 7
- What it says
- Commitments supporting an SLA may be internal (operational level agreements) or with external suppliers (underpinning contracts).
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 7 and space the ones you get wrong.