I've been doing some work on an Service Level Agreement I'm involved in and came across an article called Establishing Service Level Agreements by Naomi Karten at http://www.nkarten.com/sla.html

In it was a section called Avoiding the "Just-in-Case" Syndrome which seemed relevant to our discussions here on getting the small details of this policy document sorted out. I've quoted part of here as it may help us focus on what we need to do.

I'd still like to see us proceed with what we've already got consensus on and trust the hostmasters at APNIC to "do the right thing".

Regards, andy

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http://www.nkarten.com/sla.html#avoidjic

Avoiding the "Just-in-Case" Syndrome

In a company I visited to present a seminar on establishing service level agreements, Jeremy, a fellow in the class, told me about his intense frustration in attempting to finalize an SLA with an internal customer.

"How long have you been working on it?" I asked him, thinking he'd say three months, or perhaps six or even eight or nine months. "Oh, about two years," he responded.

Two years?

A penchant for detail-mania

The problem, Jeremy explained, is that every time they got close to declaring the agreement done, someone came up with another detail that needed attention. This back-to-the-drawing-board mindset led to more meetings, more discussions, more mumbling and grumbling, and more opportunity to find yet another detail that needed attention. Needless to say, a service level agreement still being nitpicked after two years stands a good change of never being completed.

In my experience, the driving factor in this type of situation is usually a fear on the part of one or both parties that they will be trapped forever with whatever terms and conditions end up in the agreement. Therefore, before declaring it complete, they'd better anticipate and document every conceivable situation that might ever arise. We'd better be prepared just in case, they tell themselves.

All these just-in-case details create a document that's so bogged down with minutiae that managing it becomes impossible (assuming it's actually completed and implemented). Furthermore, the presence of so much detail fosters a sense of distrust that leads each party to relentlessly watch for departures by the other from what they agreed to.