Abstract: A method and system for managing a service level of a service provided by a service provider to a customer under a service level agreement. The actual measurement data is adjudicated to correct the measurement data in accordance with at least one adjudication element that provides information relating to how to correct the measurement data. The adjudicated measurement data is transformed into operational data by being reorganized into one or more groups of data. The operational data is evaluated by applying a formula to the operational data, resulting in the operational data being configured for being subsequently qualified. The operational data is qualified by comparing the evaluated operational data with specified service level targets for at least one service level period and identifying operational data points meeting and/or not meeting the specified service level targets.

Abstract: Techniques are presented for managing execution of processes on a data processing system. The data processing system comprises process instances that are each an execution of a corresponding process. Each process instance comprises activity instances. Business impacts are determined for the process instances, the activity instances, or both. Order of execution of the activity instances is managed by allocating resources to activity instances in order to achieve an objective defined in terms of the business impacts. In another embodiment, requests are received for the execution of the processes. For a given request, one or more of the operations of assigning, updating, aggregating, and weighting of first business impacts associated with the given request are performed to create second business impacts associated with the given request. Additionally, requests can be modified.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for representing and managing data and associated relationships. In one aspect of the invention, a technique for managing data associated with a given domain comprises the following steps. A specification of data attributes representing one or more types of data to be managed is maintained. Further, a specification of algorithms representing one or more types of operations performable in accordance with the data attributes is maintained. Still further, a specification of relationships representing relationships between the data attributes and the algorithms is maintained. The data attribute specification, the algorithm specification and the relationship specification are maintained in a storage framework having multiple levels, the multiple levels being specified based on the given domain with which the data being managed is associated. The techniques may be provided in support of service level management.

Abstract: The present invention relates to the problem of scheduling work for employees and/or other resources in a help desk or similar environment. The employees have different levels of training and availabilities. The jobs, which occur as a result of dynamically occurring events, consist of multiple tasks ordered by chain precedence. Each job and/or task carries with it a penalty which is a step function of the time taken to complete it, the deadlines and penalties having been negotiated as part of one or more service level agreement contracts. The goal is to minimize the total amount of penalties paid. The invention consists of a pair of heuristic schemes for this difficult scheduling problem, one greedy and one randomized. The greedy scheme is used to provide a quick initial solution, while the greedy and randomized schemes are combined in order to think more deeply about particular problem instances.