CIM SLA & OLA Management in Incident Response 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What does OLA stand for in IT service management?
- Operational Level Agreement (Correct answer)
- Outage Log Analysis
- Organizational Lifecycle Assessment
- On-call Liaison Arrangement
Correct answer: Operational Level Agreement
OLA stands for Operational Level Agreement, which is an internal agreement between support groups outlining their responsibilities toward each other in delivering services.
Question 2: Which of the following best illustrates how an OLA supports an SLA?
- The OLA defines what the customer is billed for SLA breaches
- The OLA establishes internal team response windows that collectively enable the overall SLA commitment to be met (Correct answer)
- The OLA replaces the SLA when an incident escalates to P1
- The OLA is signed by the customer to acknowledge SLA terms
Correct answer: The OLA establishes internal team response windows that collectively enable the overall SLA commitment to be met
OLAs define the internal response and resolution commitments between support groups, ensuring that when combined, they enable the provider to honor the customer-facing SLA.
Question 3: An Underpinning Contract (UC) differs from an OLA in that a UC:
- Applies only to P1 and P2 incidents
- Is an agreement with an external third-party supplier rather than an internal team (Correct answer)
- Defines the customer's responsibilities during an incident
- Is used exclusively for cloud-based services
Correct answer: Is an agreement with an external third-party supplier rather than an internal team
An Underpinning Contract governs the relationship with external third-party suppliers (e.g., hardware vendors, ISPs), whereas an OLA governs internal support groups.
Question 4: If an internal network team fails to meet its OLA target during an incident, the most likely consequence is:
- The customer SLA is automatically paused
- The customer SLA may be breached as a downstream effect (Correct answer)
- The incident is downgraded to a lower priority
- The OLA is voided and the incident is closed
Correct answer: The customer SLA may be breached as a downstream effect
Because OLAs underpin SLAs, a failure to meet an internal OLA target can cascade into a customer-facing SLA breach.
Question 5: What is the recommended approach when an OLA between the incident management team and the database team is consistently being missed?
- Remove the database team from the OLA entirely
- Review and renegotiate the OLA targets after root cause analysis of repeated misses (Correct answer)
- Automatically escalate all future incidents to P1
- Replace OLAs with informal verbal agreements
Correct answer: Review and renegotiate the OLA targets after root cause analysis of repeated misses
Consistent OLA misses should trigger a review and renegotiation process, informed by root cause analysis, to set realistic and achievable targets.
Question 6: Which ITIL process is most directly responsible for negotiating and maintaining SLAs and OLAs?
- Problem Management
- Service Level Management (SLM) (Correct answer)
- Availability Management
- Capacity Management
Correct answer: Service Level Management (SLM)
Service Level Management (SLM) is the ITIL process responsible for negotiating, agreeing, documenting, monitoring, and reviewing SLAs and OLAs.
Question 7: During a major incident, the incident manager should primarily use OLA data to:
- Draft the post-incident report for the customer
- Ensure each support group is working within agreed response windows and escalate if targets are at risk (Correct answer)
- Calculate financial penalties owed to the customer
- Determine whether to invoke the business continuity plan
Correct answer: Ensure each support group is working within agreed response windows and escalate if targets are at risk
During an active major incident, the incident manager uses OLA data to track internal team performance and proactively escalate when internal response windows are at risk.
CIM SLA & OLA Management in Incident Response 2
What does OLA stand for in IT service management?