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Contract

SLA (Service Level Agreement)

A service level agreement is the part of a contract that states what response and resolution a client is entitled to, usually by severity, and what happens when you miss it.

It matters because it is the document both sides reach for when something has gone wrong and tempers are short. An SLA written to sound reassuring during the sale is a liability during an outage; one written around what your team can actually deliver on a bad week is a defence.

The common mistake is promising resolution times rather than response times. You control when someone picks up the ticket. You do not control when a vendor releases a fix, when a client's staff become available, or when a failed drive arrives. Committing to an outcome that depends on other people is how an SLA becomes unmeetable in exactly the situations it was written for.