Ticketing tools

Ticketing tool vary from client to client. SAP also provides SAP Solution Manager,
which is also used as Ticketing Tool.

General concept of Tickets:

Handling tickets is called Issue Tracking system. The errors or bugs forwarded by
the end user to the support team are prioritized under three seviority High, Medium
and Low. Each and every seviority as got its time limits before that we have to fix
the error.

The main job of the supporting consultant is to provide assistance on line to the
customer or the organisation where SAP is already implemented for which the person
should be very strong in the subject and the process which are implemented in SAP
at the client side to understand,to analyse,to actuate and to give the right
solution in right time.This is the job of the support consultant.

The issues or the tickets(problems) which are arised is taken care of on priority
basis by the support team consultants.

The work process in support projects are given below for your reference.

1. The customer or the end user logs a call through any tool or by mail (RADIX).

2. Each one of the support team is a part of support group.

3. Whenever a customer logs a call he /she has to mention to which work group (by
name).

4. Once the calls came to the work group the support consultant or the team need to
send an IR (Initial Response) to the user depending upon the priority of the calls.
(Top,High,Med,Low,None)

5. Then the error is fixed, debugged by the support consultant or the team. Then
after testing properly by generating TR(Transport Request through the basis admin)

6. Then it is informed to the end user/customer/super user about the changes which
have moved to the production server by CTS process.

These are the process. In summary, what I understand is that if any configuration
or customization is required to solve the issue, then the consultant have to work
on DEV Client, then the end user will test it in the QA client and after approval
the BASIS consultant has to transport it to the PRODUCTION client.

An example:

Tickets in SD can be considered as the problems which the end user or the employee
in the company face while working on R/3. Tickets usually occur during the
implementation or after theimplementation of the project. There can be numerous
problem which can occur in the production support and a person who is working in
the support has to resolve those tickets in the limited duration, every ticket has
the particular deadline alert so your responsibility is to finish it before that
deadline.

To begin with , we should give "TICKET" to you for not knowing it.

Here is an eg of a ticket raise:

End user is not able to

1. Create Sales order for a customer from a New plant , since shipping point
determination is not happened . ( Without Shipping point the document becomes
INCOMPLETE and he will not be able to proceed further like DELIVERY, BILLING).

He raises a ticket and the priority is set in one of the below:

1. Low 2. Medium 3. High.

Now you need to solve this ticket. You would analyze the problem and identify that
the SP configuration has to be done for the new plant.

You would request a transport for DEV CLIENT to BASIS. You do the change and
Request one more Transport to BASIS for QA client. The End user will test the same
by creating a sales order for the new plant and approve it.

Finally, you request a transport to move the changes to PRODUCTION. Once the change
is deployed in production the TICKET is closed. What I have given is a small
example. You would get some real issues with severity HIGH in your day-day support.
------
<b>SAP Support Ticket:</b>

In a SAP support project you get a ticket which you need to acknoledge and then
start working on that. Once the changes are done, you need to update the ticket and
close it or send it back to the pool. The timelines will be meausered as per the
SLA defined.

<b>SAP Development Ticket:</b>

In a SAP development/upgrade/implementation project you will get the functional

requirement sometimes in the form of a ticket. You need to accept the ticket and
then devlop/enhance the application/object requested as per the ticket and then
send it back to the fucntional user to Acceptance testing.
----------------
Ticket tool means which software ur using for handling the ticket.

These below are ticketing tools , from which consultants get tickets.

1) Clarify tool

2) remeidy tool

3) Solution Manager

4) Radix

Still so many are their, based on clients it will be decided, some time thorugh
emial (lotus notes, or outlook)only get the tickets.
------------------
SAP Solution Manager as the name suggests is for managing the whole gamut of SAP
and Non-SAP solutions in the IT Landscape of an organisation. It provides you the
tool, content and gateway to create, operate, manage and monitor your solutions
over time. It is supported and enhanced by SAP's support organization, SAP Active
Global Support, in conjunction with the other SAP development organizations. The
system is designed to be a centralized support installation in what is generally a
distributed set of system installations that support the business computing
functions of the SAP software suite. SAP Solution is the managing system, and the
business suite applications (e.g. CRM) is the managed system.
Solution Manager provides an extensive array of software features in the IT Support
area for enhancing, automating and improving the management of SAP's MySAP Business
Suite and NetWeaver Software Components:

Centralized Administration (Work Centers)

Project Management

Test Management

Centralized Monitoring

E2E Root Cause Analysis

Business Process Monitoring

IT Technical Reporting

Centralized Alerting

Installation Keys

Early Watch Reporting

Change Management

Support Call Management between Customer and SAP

Service Desk

Software Maintenance and Patching

SAP is assertively improving and extending many of the above feature areas.

SAP Solution Manager is the successor to ASAP ValueSAP. SAP Solution Manager helps
in implementing and managing complex system landscapes. Globally systems are
getting distributed across geographies and business processes cover more than one
system. In such complex scenarios, integrating technical and business requirements
is important for the success of IT. SAP Solution Manager provides SAP customers
with an efficient means of handling both the technical and business process side of
solution implementation.

As part of SAP Solution Management Solutions, the customers receive best practices
relating to:

- Global Strategy and Service Level Management

- Business Process Management

- Management of MySAP Technology

- Software Change Management

- Support Desk Management

SAP delivers this using support programs during implementation of the system
solution. Some of the benefits of using SAP's Solution Manager are that it helps:
- Manages the technical risk associated with the implementation of the solution
ensuring technical robustness

- Helps leverage users core competencies in implementing solutions

- Ensures solution works as intended with best practices built in.

--
My quick take is that in the Solution Manager you have a free of charge application
lifecycle management suite that fits SAP systems mostly perfectly. You have tools
for upgrade planning (Maintenance Optimizer), Inventory of systems (LMDB), Change
Management (ChaRM), monitoring in many different flavours (system monitoring,
business process monitoring, diagnostics, EWA), incident management, test
workbench, etc.

Most of the tools do things that could be already done without Solution Manager ,
but they increase traceability, are easier to use, and provide high-level
information for decision makers.

The main point against Solution Manager is that there is a significant system
administration overhead if you use it for few systems. As Solution Manager is an
additional system, if you have to manage one system with Solution Manager, you just
doubled your systems in the landscape. But if you have a hundred systems, the 101st
system is hardly noticed. Also, it is fairly complex to set-up, if you set up many
scenarios.

I think that a good way to benefit from Solution Manager if you manage few systems
is to have the Solution Manager services provided by an external company (what we
call VARs). This is just a personal opinion.
-------------
SAP Solution Manager functionalities are;

Maintenance Optimizer
System Landscape Maintenance
Early Watch Alerts.
CCMS Landscape Monitoring (including Availability Monitoring)
Central System Administration
Business Process Monitoring (Monitoring of interfaces between Business Process
Steps)
Service Level Reporting (Optimize and simplify Long-term system monitoring)
Central Job Scheduling (importing and monitoring Jobs into satellite systems)
Change Request Management (CHARM - for
implementing fast and direct changes in the productive environment, and activities
for maintenance projects, and implementation, upgrade, or
template projects).
Service Desk (Error Reporting system similar to Helpdesk)
To enable the service desk facility of the SAP Solution Manager in
order to manage incidents related to SAP more efficiently. Centralized handling of
support messages is also required. The detailed requirements corresponding to the
management of Solution Manager tickets are as follows :
Solution Manager ticket categorization by module, system, client etc
Prioritization of the ticket
Status Maintenance of the tickets. The implemented solution shall handle various
Status Codes for the Solution Manager Ticket, to cater for the various stages the
ticket goes through.
The Code list shall be finalized during the system blueprint phase of the
implementation
Implementation and Upgrade Fields for maintenance of Dates, Comments,
documentations etc. in the ticket by the various parties
Document Attachments to the Ticket
Reporting features on Tickets and their status
Workflow for the Tickets
The status of the tickets shall be set manually by the users of the system as per
the authorizations assigned or automatically by the system upon assignments to the
respective users
SAP Roles and Authorizations to be defined
and maintained for the usage of Service Desk
Solution Database (Store for Solution Documentation which works with the Service
Desk
SAP Solution Manager Central Performance History (CPH)
Standard SAP Solution Manager reports
-------------
What is tickets? and example?

The typical tickets in a production Support work could be:

1. Loading any of the missing master data attributes/texts.

2. Create ADHOC hierarchies.

3. Validating the data in Cubes/ODS.

4. If any of the loads runs into errors then resolve it.

5. Add/remove fields in any of the master data/ODS/Cube.

6. Data source Enhancement.

7. Create ADHOC reports.

1. Loading any of the missing master data attributes/texts - This would be done by
scheduling the infopackages for the attributes/texts mentioned by the client.

2. Create ADHOC hierarchies. - Create hierarchies in RSA1 for the info-object.

3. Validating the data in Cubes/ODS. - By using the Validation reports or by

comparing BW data with R/3.

4. If any of the loads runs into errors then resolve it. - Analyze the error and
take suitable action.

5. Add/remove fields in any of the master data/ODS/Cube. - Depends upon the

requirement

6. Data source Enhancement.

7. Create ADHOC reports. - Create some new reports based on the requirement of
client.

Tickets are the tracking tool by which the user will track the work which we do. It
can be a change requests or data loads or what ever. They will of types critical or
moderate. Critical can be (Need to solve in 1 day or half a day) depends on the
client. After solving the ticket will be closed by informing the client that the
issue is solved. Tickets are raised at the time of support project these may be any
issues, problems.....etc. If the support person faces any issues then he will
ask/request to operator to raise a ticket. Operator will raise a ticket and assign
it to the respective person. Critical means it is most complicated issues
....depends how you measure this...hope it helps. The concept of Ticket varies from
contract to contract in between companies. Generally Ticket raised by the client
can be considered based on the priority. Like High Priority, Low priority and so
on. If a ticket is of high priority it has to be resolved ASAP. If the ticket is of
low priority it must be considered only after attending to high priority tickets.

Checklists for a support project of BPS - To start the checklist:

1) InfoCubes / ODS / datatargets

2) planning areas

3) planning levels

4) planning packages

5) planning functions

6) planning layouts

7) global planning sequences

8) profiles

9) list of reports

10) process chains

11) enhancements in update routines

12) any ABAP programs to be run and their logic

13) major bps dev issues

14) major bps production support issues and resolution

What are the tools to download tickets from client? Are there any standard tools or
it depends upon company or client...?

Yes there are some tools for that. We use Hpopenview. Depends on client what they
use. You are right. There are so many tools available and as you said some clients
will develop their own tools using JAVA, ASP and other software. Some clients use
just Lotus Notes. Generally 'Vantive' is used for tracking user requests and
tickets.

It has a vantive ticket ID, field for description of problem, severity for the
business, priority for the user, group assigned etc.

Different technical groups will have different group ID's.

User talks to Level 1 helpdesk and they raise ticket.

If they can solve issue for the issue, fine...else helpdesk assigns ticket to the
Level 2 technical group.

Ticket status keeps changing from open, working, resolved, on hold, back from hold,
closed etc. The way we handle the tickets vary depending on the client. Some
companies use SAP CS to handle the tickets; we have been using Vantive to handle
the tickets. The ticket is handled with a change request, when you get the ticket
you will have the priority level with which it is to be handled. It comes with a
ticket id and all. It's totally a client specific tool. The common features here
can be

- A ticket Id,

- Priority,

- Consultant ID/Name,

- User ID/Name,

- Date of Post,

- Resolving Time etc.

There ideally is also a knowledge repository to search for a similar problem and
solutions given if it had occurred earlier. You can also have training manuals
(with screen shots) for simple transactions like viewing a query, saving a workbook
etc so that such queried can be addressed by using them.

When the problem is logged on to you as a consultant, you need to analyze the
problem, check if you have a similar problem occurred earlier and use ready
solutions, find out the exact server on which this has occurred etc.

You have to solve the problem (assuming you will have access to the dev system) and
post the solution and ask the user to test after the preliminary testing from your
side. Get it transported to production once tested and posts it as closed i.e. the
ticket has to be closed.
--------
Basically it depends on the SLA , the most of the company follow as below

L1 - Production issue - to be closed within - 1hour, 4 hours or 8 hours - Changes

can be done in PRD itself or changes movd from Development - QAS - Production.

L2 - Medium changes - to be closed within the time frame based on the change
request - It might be 2 days, 4 days or 1 week - Changes will be test in DEV and
Moved to QAS for UAT and then it will be moved to PRD.

L3 - Set of changes - which means it is mini project, all the changes will be done
within the duration, ex: 2 months. The changes will be moved to QAS for UAT and
integration testing, finally all the changes will be moved to PRD, it has Go-live
date and so on. this is kind of Mini projects.
-----------------------
Offshor support model

if you are supporting for an client in U.K (or) U.S

L1 support(ONSITE person) is the person who get the problem from the client and log
a call in the Ticketing tool.They will close the call

L2 support( OFFSITE person) -Person who are giving resolution to the problem from
Offshore.

L3 Support (ONSITE person) -Doing the configuration change in the Develepment,

,doing the testing then transporting to Quality(doing the testing) and then to the
PRODUCTION (LIVE)

You will doing changes in the DEVELOPMENT server only.

-----
As per the SLA with the client usually there are three levels of Support
say

L1 - Low Priority issues

L2 - Medium priority

L3 - High Priority

Based on the level of priority the issue needs to be resolved in a time as per the
SLA

The changes are always done in the developemnt client & after intial testing we
move the Change request into QA or Testing client for User acceptance testing &
then move the request to Production after approval
==============
What is SAP Production Support - Ticket Resolving
1. How the tickets in production support are resolved?
2. Give some examples with solutions?
What are the types of ticket and its importance?

This depends on the SLA. It can be like:

1. Critical.
2. Urgent.
3. High.
4. Medium
5. Low.

The response times and resolution times again are defined in the SLA based on the
clients requirement and the charges.

This is probably from the viewpoint of Criticality of the problem faced by the
client as defined by SAP.

1) First Level Ticketing:

Not severe problem. Routine errors. Mostly handled by Service desk arrangement of
the company (if have one).

Eg: a) Say Credit limit block in working on certain documents?

b) Pricing Condition Record not found even though conditions are maintained?
c) Unable to print a delivery document or Packing list?

PS: In the 4th phase of ASAP Implementation Methodology( i.e Final Preparations for
GO-LIVE) SAP has clearly specified that a Service desk needs to be arranged for any
sort of Implementation for better handling of Production errors.

Service desk lies with in the client.

2) Second Level Ticketing:

Some sort of serious problems. Those Could not be solved by Service Desk. Should be
referred to the Service Company (or may be company as prescribed in SLA).

Eg: a) Credit Exposure (especially open values) doesn't update perfectly to KNKK
Table.
b) Inter company Billing is taking a wrong value of the Bill.
c) Need a new order type to handle reservation process
 d) New product has been added to our selling range. Need to include this into
SAP. (Material Masters, Division attachements, Stock Handling etc.)

3) Third Level Ticketing:

Problems could not be solved by both of the above, are referred to Online Service
Support (OSS) of SAP Itself. SAP tries to solve the Problem, sometimes by providing
the perfect OSS Notes, fits to the error and rarely SAP logs into our Servers (via
remote log-on)for post mortem the problem. (The Medical check-up client,
connections, Login id and Passwords stuff are to be provided to SAP whenever they
need or at the time of opening OSS Message.)

There are lots of OSS Notes on each issue, SAP Top Notes and Notes explaining about
the process of raising a OSS Message.

Sometimes SAP Charges to the client / Service company depending on the Agreement
made at the time of buying License from SAP.

Eg: 1) Business Transation for the Currency 'EUR' is not possible. Check OSS Note
- This comes at the time of making Billing.
2) Transaction MMPI- Periods cannot be opened � See OSS Note.

There are many other examples on the issue.

4) Fourth Level Ticketing:

Where rarely, problems reach this level.

Those problem needs may be re-engineering of the business process due to change in
the Business strategy. Upgradation to new Version. More or less this leads to
extinction of the SAP Implementation.
-------------------
Implement SAP - Scope of Work
What are the scope of work when SAP is implement?
You should have a Project manager from your company, who will work or should work
closely with the implementing Company Project Manager.

The Implementing company will supply the Technical/Functional Consultants. Your

company should provide so-called "Super Users / Key Users. These are persons within
the company who know the business and its processes inside out.

The Key Users will work closely with the Technical Consultants in designing the
companies Business Process to fit with SAP.

The Technical consultants should pass on their knowledge to the Key Users. The Key
User will train the End Users, so they must be also trained in SAP Business
Process, this is either done by the Implementing company or your company can
send them to SAP training.

The driving person here is your Company Project Manager, in any case all company
persons involved in the Implementation project should be on the project 100
percent.

You should setup five phases :

1. Preparation
2. Blueprinting,
3. Realization
4. Preparation Go Live
5. Go Live/Support
From the Project Management side, there are many thing that must be set up prior to
Blueprinting, such as Project Charter, Project Plan, Risk Management Plan, Change
Management plan etc.

As far as a SOW, this is part of your Charter and there are many Templates of such
documents, you need more than just the template, you must know how to analysis your
overall environment (Company goals, landscape, Business objectives etc) in coming
up with the Scope. More than one person is involved in the SOW defination.

Implementation, Configuration And Customization

What is the difference between Implementation, Configuration & Customization?

Implementation:

Implementation is the whole process that defines a complete method to implement the
SAP ERP Software in an organisation. The SAP solution comes pre-configured meaning
that in theory a company needs to merely set up master data (e.g. material,
customer, vendor, pricing records etc) in the SAP system and start Transacting on
the new system. This however rarely happens; as all companies are different in some
way so normally the standard settings are copied and modified as per need.

Configuration:

It is done through existing parameter and Functionalities available in SAP. All we

do in configuration is sync the system with the company process so that system
could perform as per the business requirement, and configuration is done utilizing
the existing SAP structure and functionalities.

Customization:

Basically customization involves developers, if we need to make a configuration

that is not supported by SAP default functionalities then with the help of ABAPer
new features are added to meet the business requirement. These changes are normally
outlined on what�s called a functional spec, which is usually written by the
responsible functional consultant.

Customization can be costly and can complicate future upgrades to the software
because the code changes/modifications may not easily migrate to the new version.
-----------
What Is The Benefits of SAP Implementation - Jai

Benefits of SAP implementation :

Benefits to the suppliers :

1) SAP increases their market share and , increased business by virtue of AMCs.
2) Implementer gets business and people working at client side will build their
resume.
3) Hardware manufacturer gets their share of business without any effort.

Clients :
1) Efficient , user specific, customized legacy system dies. Along with all the
trained people to manage it will also loose their importance and gets demotivated.
2) Increased cost of IT by virtue of Initial expenditure on SAP licenses/ Hardware/
Net working & implementation. recurring costs /year goes up by virtue of AMC for
SAP licenses and support
3) Entire Company performance goes down. Each person puts the blame on SAP for not
working properly,
4) Trained manpower in SAP leaves the company in search of better ( ? )
opportunities leaving the systems department in disarray . This puts more
dependence on support from AMC ( which is a mirage and clients pay heavy price )
5) One year post go live, with great difficulty , companies finalise accounts and
have nightmarish times explaining the auditors.
6) Educated end users will find out lots of open ends in various clearing accounts.
Due to pressure from Sr.Management, they try to pass manual entries and end up in
differential account balances. ( simple inventory statement form MC.1 does not
tally with sum of corresponding GL accounts )
7) End user start raising tickets on supports for flimsy issues consuming precious
AMC hours
8) End of one year, the Sr management will realise that only 30 % of their actual
business process were mapped in SAP and to full fill their other business needs,
they need to go for other licenses in SAP modules --- more expenditure......!
9) Middle of second year, the database growth will increase and Size of Hardware
needs up gradation...leading to more expenditure
10) Release notes for SAP will constantly put customised report updating..at client
end. ( hope they have trained manpower to tackle it )
11) List of reports on MIS increases. End users reluctance to accept SAP reports
puts more pressure on MIS
12) every transaction will be recorded which includes the mistake done by end users
. All the mistakes done by respective users of MM/SD/PP ends at accounts department
for answers.
13) End users and Sr management will realise that old system legacy ) was better
and was answering to their needs with few exceptions like inter connectivity, web
etc.
14) Dependency of legacy system and mapping it to SAP will produce replica of
legacy system in the form of SAP ...! This leads to fact that all the features of
SAP will never comes to light and implementers will package legacy system in SAP
and run away with money. This happens at most of clients. Where all the minus of
legacy systems reappears in SAP too...! ( why do you need to spend millions to get
what you had earlier ..! )

Real benefits ( seen and appreciated by very very very few clients )
1) one data flows across all domains
2) Visibility of data
3) Visibility of inventory/accounts/MIS for better control
4) Planning and automated working avoiding procedural hurdles for various domains
like purchase/production/sales etc
5) Inter-connectivity with other applications of PDM/SCM/CRM/ bla bla bla..
-----------------
SAP Tickets - What Is That?
Handling tickets is called Issue Tracking system. The errors or bugs forwarded by
the end user to the support team are prioritized under three severity High, Medium
and Low. Each and every severity as got its time limits before that we have to fix
the error.
The main job of the supporting consultant is to provide assistance online to the
customer or the organization where SAP is already implemented for which the person
should be very strong in the subject and the process which are implemented in SAP
at the client side to understand, to analyze, to actuate and to give the right
solution in right time. This is the job of the support consultant.

The open issues or the tickets (problems) which are raised is taken care of on
priority basis by the support team consultants.

The work process in support projects are given below for your reference.
 1. The customer or the end user logs a call through any open tickets handling
tool or by mail (RADIX).

2. Each one of the support team is a part of support group.

3. Whenever a customer logs a call he /she has to mention to which work group (by
name).

4. Once the calls came to the work group the support consultant or the team need
to send an IR (Initial Response) to the user depending upon the priority of the
calls. (Top, High, Medium, Low, None)

5. Then the error is fixed, debugged by the support consultant or the team. Then
after testing properly by generating TR (Transport Request through the basis
administrator)

6. Then it is informed to the end user/customer/super user about the changes which
have moved to the production server by CTS process.

These are the process. In summary, what I understand is that if any configuration
or customization is required to solve the issue, then the consultant have to work
on DEV Client, then the end user will test it in the QA client and after approval
the BASIS consultant has to transport it to the PRODUCTION client.

An example:

Tickets in SAP SD can be considered as the problems which the end user or the
employee in the company face while working on R/3. Tickets usually occur during
the implementation or after the implementation of the project. There can be
numerous problem which can occur in the production support and a person who is
working in the support has to resolve those tickets in the limited duration, every
open tickets has the particular deadline alert so your responsibility is to finish
it before that deadline.

To begin with , we should give "TICKET" to you for not knowing it.

Here is an e.g. of a ticket raise:

End user is not able to

1. Create Sales order for a customer from a New plant , since shipping point
determination is not happened . (Without Shipping point the document becomes
INCOMPLETE and he will not be able to proceed further like DELIVERY, BILLING).

He raises a ticket and the priority is set in one of the below:

1. Low 2. Medium 3. High.

Now you need to solve this ticket. You would analyze the problem and identify that
the SP configuration has to be done for the new plant.

You would request a transport for DEV CLIENT to BASIS. You do the change and
Request one more Transport to BASIS for QA client. The End user will test the same
by creating a sales order for the new plant and approve it.

Finally, you request a transport to move the changes to PRODUCTION. Once the change
is deployed in production the TICKET is closed. What I have given is a small
example. You would get some real issues with severity HIGH in your day-day support.
----------------
What Is Maintaining SLA - SAP Service Level Agreement
What is maintaining SAP SLA in production support?
SLA is an abbreviation for "Service Level Agreement". It means to have guaranteed
reaction or resolving times for incidents (= trouble tickets).

For instance you could have defined the following SLA levels For example:

Gold: Reaction time = 30 minutes, resolving time = 4 hours

Silver: Reaction time = 4 hours, resolving time = 24 hours

SLAs normally are part of a contract between a customer and a service provider.

Or in details description:

SLA are Service Level Agreements to resolve the tickets by the market. SLA means
Service Level agreement. It is the service agreement between a Company and a
service provider. For example an IT Organization providing support of SAP / other
software / hardware has a agreement. This can be for example categorized based on
criticality of the incident. High priority incident has to be resolved on 10 hours.
Medium priority incident has a 3 days time to resolve etc.

Another good example is when you encounter problems with the SAP ERP modules

e.g. If you are creating an OSS message reporting to SAP that you found a product
bug, this would be one ticket.

In regard to time frames this usually differs from SLA to SLA, e.g. if you raise a
VERY HIGH OSS message, SAP is supposed to react (start working) on that OSS within
one hour.

Usually the higher the priority the smaller the reaction time and also maximum
processing time to resolve the problem is.

You would solve a ticket by analyzing the problem e.g. through debugging the
example and once you identified the problem making the appropriate coding changes
to correct the issue.

Define service level agreement

SLA's are nothing but Service level agreements.

These are defined in project preparation phase and client would have made an
agreement with the company for the level of service. The SLA's are applicable in
Production as well as maintenance support projects. For example: if your company
follows a ticketing process (a ticket is nothing but an environment contains
complete description of the problem which contains Short description, problem,
customer contact details, screen shots of the error etc.,) and for each ticket
there will be a severity for example business critical issues or problems may be
treated as high or top severitie's. In those case your company or your team has to
deliver the solution to the customer in agreed time limit or otherwise you might
end up missing SLA's.

SLA's has two important time specifications

1. IPRT --- initial problem response time --- this is nothing but time taken to
respond to the problem.
2. PRT --- Problem response time ----- this is nothing but time taken to solve the
issue or problem.
Both IPRT and PRT will be different for different severitie's.