Service Level Agreements - Cheating is common: Read this and
this. Why put the fox in charge of the henhouse?
Followup April 15: Suppose you've got an SLA to fix the water treatment facilities in an office park within 5 hours of any breakdown 90% of the time. How do you game your system for tracking that, while cutting corners with parts on hand and techs available, so you can underbid competition and still be profittable? Many easy ways. We won't even discuss claiming to use only certified technicians, when maybe only one of four is. Just keep shuffling technician assignments so you can fudge the paperwork. Tricks used to keep solution time within specs include:
1. Train clients to call technician rather than Help Desk, so trouble tickets don't get entered and the clock doesn't start until after problem is solved, even if it's 2 days later. System shows problem solved in 1 hour, rather than actual 2 days. This is done by dumbing down Help Desk, and providing cell numbers of technicians, so clients think they are being smart to call techs directly.
2. Technicians call clients at 12:20 or 4:30 PM, ensuring they'll be out to lunch or gone already, so "clock can be stopped, as "client not reachable" meanwhile tech orders parts for next day delivery. System shows problem solved in 3 hours, rather than the actual 26 hours.
3. If a problem is solved, can it be made into more than 1 ticket, so the duplicate tickets are all solved "in one hour"?
4. The technician creates tickets for trivial matters (that no one called in) that also get solved "in one hour": Preventive Maintainence, Firmware upgrades, etc; further skewing statistics.
Of course these methods are easily transferable to any area of endeavor that may have an SLA for service. This could be NASA or a Refinery or your Plumbing or Internet Connection. In the 21st century American Corporations mistakenly think they are saving by outsourcing such work, not knowing how they are being used, and how the contractors have zero loyalty to them. And then we have shuttle disasters, refinery explosions, network outages, email gone astray or other grief.
Did I mention the contractor saving by providing two technicians/engineers for installing new filtration system, when manufacturer specifies system is so heavy and bulky that four are needed for safe installation? Then there's the old standard of repairing things with refurbished parts or third party parts rather than the new OEM parts the SLA may specify. Or better yet, just dusting things off and charging (T&M) for a out of spec nonwarranty repair when none was made. Any good auto mechanic can charge for at least 10 hours of work in an 8 hour day.
