Knowledge Base
This page comprises a glossary of terms that the XLA Institute uses. It is a careful curation. Some terms are specific to Experience Management (e.g., the Experience Management Framework) while other terms are generic but of particular value for Experience Management (e.g., business outcomes).
The XLA Quick Reference Guide
1. XLA
An Experience Level Agreement (XLA) is a a commitment to creating a defined experience for IT service provider and consumer that is measurable with experience indicators and resulting in positive business outcomes.
It is also an agreement that extends the scope of the output-oriented Service Level Agreement (SLA) to describe the collaboration, experience, and business impact associated with IT services – the outcome. This outcome-oriented document defines the agreed goals, metrics that indicate achievement of the goals, and procedures for collaboration.
2. Experience
IT service is where value is actually realized. It is the moment of truth when people experience the IT solution and benefit from it. Value from service is uniquely and subjectively experienced.
Experience is a set of emotions, feelings, and judgments that result from sensory perception while living through an event.
Events, and experiences, are both individual moments and sets of related moments.
Experiences that occur “in-time” during each of these individual moments also contribute to the experience of the set of moments that evolves “over-time.”
Each actor experiences a service differently, and each experience differs for each person. This creates a unique perspective reality for each person.
Each experience influences the provider-consumer relationship, with an essential role for trust in the provider's intentions, integrity, benevolence, and "technical" abilities in relevant domains, and their reciprocal trust.
People's experience contributes to their desire for emotional well-being, so experience is a significant consideration in designing and implementing human-centric services.
3. Experience management
Experience Management (XM) is a set of activities that achieves better experience and greater business impact for both service consumer and service provider by driving and improving collaboration. It is described in terms of the XLA Practice Areas:
- Interact between consumer and provider
- Measure sentiment, operational performance and context
- Assess data for problem areas. Ask, so what? What does the data tell us?
- Explore the problem and possible solutions. Ask, what now? What is the best solution?
- Agree on the best solution
- Restructure the operating model
- Refine the way of working within the operating model.
4. The Experience Management Framework
Experience Management is displayed in the overarching Experience Management Framework, an overview of how experience can be managed within a business context. Starting with the overall business and related experience outcomes, the Experience Management Framework visualises the ambitions, experience indicators, influencers and findings, and the iterative process they take in improving experience, reaching and identifying new outcomes. The framework is comprised of:
- Collaboration The act of working with someone else to achieve something. In successful collaborations, there are constructive win-win situations and agreement about a common goal. Collaboration is one of the three value drivers of XLA.
- Success Factors The combination of three factors needed for taking action. These factors are:
- Mindset The conviction that it is possible to let go of old belief systems and traditional managerial reflexes to adopt the new way of working with XLA.
- Skillset A set of skills that is needed to implement and execute new thinking from the XLA Mindset.
- Toolset A set of tools that is needed to get a sufficient understanding of, and to focus management efforts on, collaboration, experience, and business impact. It often includes software applications.
- Business Impact A noticeable and defined result from work conducted, a desired business impact is something any business will have. Defining one achievable by improving experience creates a win-win scenario where businesses, employees and customers can benefit.
- Experience Outcomes A defined result in the experience of the XLA target audience.
- Experience Ambitions Statements of intent for the experience that is to be staged. One experience ambition forms the basis of one XLA.
- Indicators The various data points used to measure experience for an XLA.
- Experience Findings and Decisions An aggregation of all controlled experience indicator data to create a numerical score on the state of experience. Findings come from exploring the various data points that led to this score and provide the basis for collaborating and deciding on remedying action for the area requiring experience improvement.
5. Experience Indicator Metrics and the XLA Stack
Metrics are based on data regarding people’s sentiment, operational and technical performance, and the context within which sentiment and performance are measured.
- Experience (X) data regarding services is subjectively approximated by their expressed judgements and is the experience data that helps us understand how people
feel. X data is usually gathered via sentiment surveys - Operational (O) data is comprised of metrics gathered from operational factors such as SLAs and KPIs
that provide context to sentiment. - Technical (T) data is comprised of metrics from technical tools such those measuring digital employee experience (DeX) or device health. Like O data, T data provide valuable context to sentiment
that can be used to provide context to sentiment - X, O and T data are experience indicator; some contextual data may be outside our sphere of control. These include factors like weather and political events that can contribute to mood. In this case, just awareness of the data and its impact needs to be considered.
- Because each person experiences service differently, and for each person, each experience differs, the metrics, indicators, and measures are regularly compared with desired experience outcomes and business impact, and improved accordingly.
The set of experience indicators used to measure experience come together to create an XLA Stack. This is a visual representation of an XLA’s experience ambition statement and associated indicators.
6. Experience Management Journey
The Experience Optimization Framework is a six-stage iterative framework centred on the process of designing and implementing XLAs for continuous experience improvement
It comprises six phases:
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Enlighten - Inspire your ecosystem Do people within the business know what experience is why it is important to manage? Enlighten highlights the importance of ensuring experience is an understood concept throughout the organization before committing to its improvement
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Explore - Know where you are Undertaking assessments into the organization’s current readiness and capability to improve experience as well as exploring the current experience landscape to understand what the wants and needs are of those consuming experience
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Envision - Know where you are going Creating experience ambitions to determine where we want our experience provided to be, linking not just the wants and needs from Explore but economic factors, providing tangible organizational benefits to our experience ones
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Enable - Create your XLAs Using designed sentiment questions based on wants and need, and available, measurable O and T data points, link the controllable experience indicators to our ambition to create an XLA
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Execute - Put your XLAs in operation Putting our designed XLAs in practice via the team who oversee and manage XLA lifecycle. This team is called the Experience Management Office (XMO)
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Embrace - Act on experience findings With XLAs in operation, the XMO will retrieve and interpret controlled experience indicator data, determine patterns and pathways, recommend action plans and govern experience.
The Experience Management Journey is initially executed by a temporary Task Force until an effective way of working has been established. Then it is transferred to a permanent Experience Management Office that gradually expands the scope to improve and manage more services from an Experience Management perspective.
7. Experience Management Office
The Experience Management Office (XMO) is the team that oversees the lifecycle of our XLAs from design and implementation through to reiteration and retirement.
It comprises of the following three missions:
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Manage experience measures The design, distribution, and collection of X data-generating sentiment surveys, as well as the gathering of other experience indicator data.
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Interpret and action experience findings Determining what that data is saying and why it is happening before determining appropriate remedying action
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Manage experience Governing and leading the XMO, setting objectives based on data or experience improvement actions and reporting on progress.
Underlying each mission is a structure of scope, accompanying roles and experience competencies:
- Scope The tasks undertaken as part of a mission.
- Roles Positions within the XMO with responsibilities working towards the fulfilment of a mission. Roles include designing surveys, interpreting data and leading the XMO.
- Art & Science of Experience Competencies The one or more experience competencies required per mission. An example is the art and science of questionnaire construction and surveys being required for the mission, manage experience measures.
