When SLAs become hostile takeovers
An SLA is supposed to align teams on expectations. Often it just creates an adversarial relationship between two teams who were supposed to be on the same side.
Internal SLAs start as a polite way to set expectations. Six months in, they're a weapon. "You violated the SLA" replaces "can you help us out this week." The relationship has gone from collaborative to contractual.
What goes wrong
When teams optimize to the SLA, they game it. Tickets get re-categorized. Work gets deferred until 5pm so it counts as next-day. The SLA met its numbers, the underlying work didn't get better, and the relationship is worse than before.
Use SLAs sparingly
Internal SLAs make sense for things that are genuinely contract-like — uptime, response times for critical incidents. For everything else, replace the SLA with a relationship and a shared metric. Most internal frictions don't need a contract.
An SLA is what you reach for when trust has already broken down.