Plan Recovery Before an SLA Breach
Design an operations view for spotting at-risk support commitments and agreeing on a credible recovery plan before time runs out.
The brief
Understand the problem
Background
Support leads can see a countdown to breach, but a timer alone does not explain why work is stalled or which intervention will help. Reassigning everything marked red can simply move the bottleneck elsewhere.
User context
Owen leads an enterprise support shift. Six cases are likely to miss their first-response or resolution targets during the next two hours, and two specialists are already at capacity.
Product problem
A lead needs to distinguish genuine risk from misleading timers, compare interventions, and make a recovery commitment that agents and account teams can follow.
Objective
Design a breach-risk queue and planning flow for one shift, from diagnosis through intervention and follow-up.
What to design
Define the experience
Required experience
- Review cases grouped by breach risk and commitment type
- Inspect the cause, dependencies, and customer impact for one case
- Choose an intervention with an accountable owner
- Monitor whether the recovery plan is working
Screens and states
- SLA risk overview
- Case risk detail
- Recovery plan
- Plan monitoring
Core user flow
Follow the critical path
- 01
Owen opens the next-two-hours risk view and filters for contractual resolution targets
- 02
He inspects a high-impact case blocked on a database specialist
- 03
He compares reassignment, customer update, and target-exception options
- 04
He assigns a specialist review and schedules a proactive update
- 05
The case returns to the monitoring list with progress and remaining risk visible
Product rules
Requirements and constraints
Requirements
- Distinguish first response, next update, and resolution commitments
- Explain each risk estimate using queue age, dependencies, staffing, and recent activity
- Show the effect of an intervention on both the case and the receiving owner's workload
- Require an owner, due time, and customer communication plan
- Keep contractual exceptions separate from ordinary operational recovery
Constraints
- Timers must use the customer's contract calendar and time zone
- Risk estimates may be incomplete and must not appear as guarantees
- Only authorized leads can approve target exceptions
Reality check
States worth considering
Finish line
What to deliver
- Four desktop screens for identifying risk, planning recovery, and monitoring the result
Optional direction
Visual resources
Use these as a starting constraint if you want one. They are not part of the required solution.