XLA in Jira Service Management: Beyond SLA Success
Your dashboards look great. Tickets are resolved on time, agents are hitting every target, and your SLA reports are glowing green. On paper, IT support is a success.
But when you talk to the people on the other side of the portal, the story often sounds very different. Employees still complain about slow service, managers see productivity lost to avoidable delays, and consultants hear clients describe IT as a blocker rather than a partner.
This contradiction is so common it has a name: the watermelon effect. Everything looks green on the surface, yet when you cut it open, you discover that users’ experiences are still painfully red.
During a recent Atlassian Community Event, Charlotte from Elements and Dean Shaffer from Adaptavist explored how to move beyond this trap. Their session introduced a concept that is gaining momentum in IT service management: Experience Level Agreements, or XLAs. In addition to SLAs, which measure process efficiency, XLAs measure how support is actually experienced by the people who rely on it every day.
Why SLAs aren’t enough without XLA
Service Level Agreements are essential. They keep teams accountable and provide clear benchmarks for performance. Operational metrics matter, but they only tell half the story.
The problem is that SLAs are blind to context. Imagine an employee whose laptop fails first thing in the morning. IT responds within 15 minutes, and by early afternoon, the device is repaired. Every SLA target is met. Yet the employee still lost an entire morning of work, missed important meetings, and ended the day frustrated. According to the SLA, this was a success. From the employee’s perspective, it was a failure.
That gap between operational success and human experience is exactly what XLAs aim to close. Instead of focusing solely on speed and efficiency, XLAs ask a different set of questions: Did the employee feel supported? Did they remain productive? Did the interaction build trust rather than frustration?
The watermelon effect
The watermelon metaphor illustrates this perfectly. When you look at SLA dashboards, everything appears green on the outside. But if you take the time to ask users how they felt, the picture inside often turns out to be bright red.
Charlotte shared a simple example that resonates with anyone who has ever worked in IT. Picture the same laptop failure scenario, but this time approached with an XLA mindset. Instead of passively waiting for the employee to report the issue, IT detects the failure and proactively notifies them that a replacement is already on its way. While they wait, the employee is given access to a virtual desktop so they can continue working. Later, the IT team checks in to ensure that no critical meetings were missed and in the early afternoon, the device is repaired.
The SLA clock might still show a four-hour resolution, but the lived experience is completely different. The employee remained productive, felt reassured, and trusted IT to have their back. This is the value of XLAs: they capture outcomes that SLAs cannot.
From coffee beans to Starbucks: The experience economy
To explain this shift, Charlotte used the analogy of the coffee economy. At its simplest, coffee is a commodity, sold by weight and measured by cost per kilo. Add packaging and distribution, and it becomes a product, evaluated on efficiency and ROI. When you order coffee in a café, you are buying a service, measured by speed, quality, and price.
But when you walk into a Starbucks, you are paying for something beyond the beverage itself. You are buying the ambiance, the personalization of your order, the reliability of the brand, and the feeling of being part of a consistent experience. The value no longer lies in the coffee alone but in the experience that surrounds it.
The same applies to IT services. Counting tickets is like counting beans. Tracking SLA resolution times is like measuring the speed of service. But to deliver real value, IT must move into the experience economy: building trust, reducing friction, and creating the conditions for employees to be productive and satisfied. That is what XLAs measure.
A framework for XLAs
So how can IT teams bring this idea to life in Jira Service Management? Charlotte introduced a four-layer framework that combines technical data with human feedback.
At the base are operational metrics, the classic SLAs such as response and resolution times. On top of this sits technical data: system health, ticket flow, and first-contact resolution rates. Together, these two layers describe how the service operates.
But that is not enough. To understand the human impact, you need experience data such as customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), net promoter scores (NPS), or even sentiment analysis of user feedback. Finally, at the top of the pyramid are XLA goals, the outcomes you intentionally want to create, such as frictionless collaboration, higher trust in IT, or uninterrupted productivity.
Only when you combine these four layers do you see the full picture of how service is both delivered and experienced.
The maturity journey: from SLA to XLA
Shifting from SLAs to XLAs is not something that happens overnight. It is a journey of maturity, with several stages along the way.
At level zero, there is no measurement of experience at all,just raw ticket counts and basic operational metrics. Many organizations still find themselves here, operating blind to how their services are perceived.
Level one introduces reactive measurement. Teams may track CSAT ans basic SLAs through surveys sent at ticket closure, but feedback is minimal and only captured after the fact.
At level two, organizations begin to engage proactively with users. They look for patterns in the data, correlate experience with productivity, and act on the insights to improve workflows.
Finally, level three represents a fully integrated XLA strategy. At this stage, experience metrics are aligned with business outcomes, and IT no longer operates as a support provider but as a strategic partner in the organization.
Most companies will not reach level three immediately, and that is not the point. The goal is to identify where you are today and take the next step forward.
How Elements support the journey?
Charlotte illustrated how Elements apps for Jira Service Management help teams progress through these stages in practical ways.
With Elements Pulse, IT teams can track not just SLA compliance but also CSAT, NPS and service quality. The app brings operational, technical, and experience data together into clear dashboards, giving leaders the visibility they need to act.
Elements Connect enriches request forms by pulling information from external systems like CRM, HR tools or CMDBs. This reduces back-and-forth and provides both users and agents with the context they need to move quickly.
Elements Overview displays hidden information to the customer on the portal view to improve support transparency. The requester has more information on what’s happening on his/her request.
And with Elements Catalyst, portal structure and request type performances are available for the service owner to spot areas of improvement and optimization.
Taken together, these apps provide practical ways for JSM admins, consultants, and partners to make the leap from measuring efficiency to measuring experience.
Why XLAs Matter Now
The shift toward XLAs is not just a trend, it is a response to real changes in workplace expectations. Employees today are used to seamless, consumer-grade experiences in their personal lives. They order groceries online, get real-time delivery updates, and expect instant recommendations. When they face clunky, fragmented IT processes at work, the frustration is even sharper.
The cost of this frustration is significant. Time is lost. Teams become disengaged. Trust in IT erodes. And ultimately, the business suffers.
By adopting XLAs, organizations can turn IT from a reactive cost center into a proactive driver of productivity and satisfaction. Instead of simply meeting targets, IT begins to deliver outcomes that employees actually value.
Start your XLA journey
Moving from SLAs to XLAs is not about discarding operational metrics. It is about complementing them with measures that reflect the real employee experience. And it is not about reaching perfection overnight, it is about taking the next step forward, building maturity gradually, and proving value at every stage.
At Elements, our mission is to help teams make this transition. Through apps like Elements Pulse, Elements Connect, Elements Overview, and Elements Catalyst, we support JSM admins and partners in creating service experiences that feel human, not just efficient.
Whether you’re an IT leader aiming to improve employee experience, or a Solution Partner guiding clients to get more from Jira Service Management, XLAs can help you shift from efficiency to real impact.
Our team is here to help you take the first step and map out what your own XLA journey could look like.
Curious to see how this plays out in practice? Watch the full Atlassian Community Event replay with Charlotte and Dean to discover the demos and examples they shared. 👉 Watch the video here
After all, as Maya Angelou once said, people will forget what you said or did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. The same is true for IT services.