practice

Service Level Expectation (SLE)

Published on
1 minute read

A service level expectation (SLE) forecasts how long it should take a given item to flow from start to finish within the Scrum Team’s Workflow. The Scrum Team uses its SLE to find active flow issues and to inspect and adapt in cases of falling below those expectations.

The SLE itself has two parts: a range of elapsed days and a probability associated with that period (e.g., 85% of work items should be finished in eight days or less). The SLE should be based on the Scrum Team’s historical Cycle Time, and once calculated, the Scrum Team should make it transparent. If no historical Cycle Time data exists, the Scrum Team should make its best guess and then inspect and adapt once there is enough historical data to do a proper SLE calculation.

A reasonable SLE should be less than your Sprint length and shorter improves predictability.

Service Level Expectation (SLE)

Resources

References 

practice

Connect with Martin Hinshelwood

If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.

Our Happy Clients​

We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.​

Hubtel Ghana Logo
Epic Games Logo
Lean SA Logo
Teleplan Logo
Emerson Process Management Logo
Genus Breeding Ltd Logo
MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. Logo
ProgramUtvikling Logo
Trayport Logo
Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd Logo
Lockheed Martin Logo
Freadom Logo
Healthgrades Logo
Workday Logo
Slaughter and May Logo
Higher Education Statistics Agency Logo
Akaditi Logo
Philips Logo
Nottingham County Council Logo
Department of Work and Pensions (UK) Logo
Washington Department of Transport Logo
Washington Department of Enterprise Services Logo
Ghana Police Service Logo
Royal Air Force Logo
Deliotte Logo
Xceptor - Process and Data Automation Logo
Workday Logo
Philips Logo
Lean SA Logo
Qualco Logo