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Set an SLE

A Service Level Expectation (SLE) is your team's promise about flow, stated in the only currency Metriq trusts: measured time. It reads as "N% of items finish within D days" — for example, "85% of items finish within 7 days." This guide sets one.

An SLE is not a deadline per item and it is not an estimate. It is a probabilistic expectation derived from how your team has actually flowed. See SLE and p85 in the glossary.

Before you set one

Look at your cycle-time scatterplot first. An SLE you pull out of the air will either be trivially met or constantly breached. Set it from evidence: read your current P85 off the chart, and choose an SLE at or just above it — a target the team can actually keep, then tighten over time.

Set it

  1. Open Analytics.
  2. Find the Set SLE control in the header of the cycle-time card (in the Flow group; it shows your current SLE once set, e.g. SLE: 7d @ p85).
  3. Click it to open the SLE settings.
  4. Enter two values:
    • Target (days) — the number of days items should finish within.
    • Percentile — how often that target should hold: 50th, 70th, 85th, or 95th.
  5. Click Save.

The popover states the contract plainly: items should finish within the target days, at the chosen percentile.

Choosing the percentile

The percentile is the strength of the promise:

  • p50 — a coin flip. Half the time you beat it, half the time you don't. Too weak for a commitment.
  • p85 — the default and the recommended choice. Strong enough to plan around, loose enough to hold without heroics.
  • p95 — a near-guarantee, at the cost of a much larger target number of days. Use it when missing badly is expensive.

Higher percentile means a safer promise but a larger day count. There is no free lunch: tighten the days and you lower the percentile you can honestly hit.

Read it back

Once saved, the SLE appears as a bold target line on the cycle-time scatterplot, labeled like SLE: 85% ≤ 7d. Dots below the line met the expectation; dots above it breached it. That line is your at-a-glance scorecard — watch the fraction of dots that stay under it.

When to revisit it

Re-read the SLE whenever your scatterplot shifts. If almost every dot sits well below the line, tighten it — your team got faster and the promise is now too easy. If dots keep landing above it, either the work changed or the promise was always too aggressive; loosen it or, better, attack the variability that is pushing items over.

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