Practical Service Level Management: Delivering High-Quality Web-Based Services

Policy Design

Designing policies becomes more complicated as you move from the elements to the services they support. Several infrastructures might be involved and the decisions made by the policy system must reflect more conditions, each of which must be tested and analyzed.

One important tool for assessing policy robustness as policies are designed is called Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). It is commonly found in structured process and design methods, such as Six Sigma.

Using a spreadsheet or table with yellow stickies on a whiteboard, FMEA accounts for the following:

• A description where a policy must be applied (failure mode)

• A description of the impact (effect) of the failure mode

• The severity of the failure mode, rated on a scale ...