Stuard's post— est. reading time: 9 minutes

Introduction

Fast-paced digital product teams focus heavily on speed—reducing time to market, meeting customer deadlines, and releasing features on a regular cadence. Security teams, meanwhile, operate with a different lens: ensuring systems are protected, vulnerabilities remediated, and compliance obligations met. Both sets of teams often rely on Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) to define their performance expectations, but these agreements can pull in different directions.

Security SLAs typically demand timely closure of vulnerabilities, regardless of release schedules. Delivery SLAs, on the other hand, prioritise release deadlines and feature throughput. Without careful coordination, these differing mandates can lead to stand-offs, delayed releases, and strained team dynamics. The solution lies not in choosing one priority over the other, but in creating shared models that reflect the full spectrum of business risk.

Conflicting SLAs: A Common Challenge

It’s not unusual for a product release to be halted by a security finding that appears, on the surface, to be of moderate concern. From a risk management standpoint, pausing deployment to address the issue is prudent. But for the product owner facing customer commitments, the delay can jeopardise business outcomes.

This challenge is often procedural rather than technical. Security SLAs may have been drafted without input from delivery teams, based on abstract threat modelling or industry standards. Meanwhile, delivery targets are defined in isolation, shaped by customer agreements and roadmap milestones. Neither side is acting unreasonably—but they are working from different definitions of urgency.

Illustrative Scenario: Misalignment Under Pressure

A B2B technology company preparing to launch a strategic feature encountered an unexpected hurdle. A static analysis scan flagged a vulnerability during the final stages of testing. Though labelled “moderate” severity, it fell under the security team's no-release policy for unresolved issues of that category.

The engineering team had already committed a delivery date to a major client, with marketing and commercial teams aligned around the launch. Unable to negotiate an exception, the release was delayed while teams debated how to interpret the risk. What emerged from this incident was not a disagreement over security per se, but a lack of shared decision-making structure. No mechanism existed for jointly weighing risk against commercial impact in a timely fashion.

Why Misalignment Occurs

This type of conflict is not rare. Several factors contribute to the recurring tension between security and delivery expectations:

• Differing Objectives: Security teams are incentivised to eliminate risk; delivery teams to ship value.
• Siloed SLA Formation: SLAs are often created independently, without operational integration across teams.
• Uniform Policy Application: Security policies may treat all medium or high-severity issues equally, regardless of actual context.
• No Resolution Path: Escalation processes for resolving SLA conflicts are rarely formalised or timely.

Over time, this misalignment leads to workarounds, such as teams suppressing alerts, bypassing gates, or reframing issues to fit the process—all of which erode both security posture and delivery confidence.

Steps Towards SLA Cohesion

Reconciling these differences starts with mutual recognition. Delivery timelines and security controls are both essential. The goal is not to dilute risk standards or delay product outcomes, but to jointly manage risk through structured trade-offs. Several principles can support this effort:

1. Introduce Risk-Based Tiering

Not all vulnerabilities carry the same urgency. By introducing a contextual scoring model—one that considers exploitability, system exposure, business sensitivity, and existing mitigations—teams can move beyond binary block/pass decisions. This enables prioritisation that reflects actual impact rather than theoretical severity.

2. Define Flexible, Context-Aware SLAs

SLA policies should incorporate business factors. For example:

• Immediate fixes for critical vulnerabilities in publicly exposed systems
• Deferred remediation with compensating controls for less severe issues in internal services
• Conditional exceptions for time-sensitive deliveries, logged and reviewed post-release

This granularity allows risk to be addressed proportionally, rather than uniformly.

3. Establish Formal Escalation Channels

When SLAs conflict, a clear process must exist for collaborative resolution. This might include:

• Pre-defined criteria for exception handling
• Designated stakeholders from both teams to assess trade-offs
• Audit trails capturing the rationale for decisions

By removing ambiguity, escalation pathways can prevent stand-offs and keep delivery moving without compromising standards.

4. Enhance Shared Visibility

Centralised dashboards that show SLA compliance status, risk posture, and pending exceptions give teams a common source of truth. Visualising the interplay between delivery milestones and security requirements improves transparency and facilitates constructive discussion.

5. Support Through Leadership

It’s important that executive leadership reinforces alignment. Shared KPIs, cross-functional governance bodies, and co-funded initiatives signal that both speed and security matter. When leadership models this balance, teams are more likely to do the same.

Outcomes of a Joint Approach

When delivery and security teams co-own SLAs, benefits go beyond reduced conflict. They include:

• Faster Time to Resolution: Teams can make decisions more quickly with less friction.
• Improved Trust: Joint accountability reduces finger-pointing and fosters collaboration.
• Better Risk Posture: Resources are focused on genuine threats, not compliance box-ticking.
• Increased Delivery Confidence: Releases proceed with fewer last-minute surprises or escalations.

Conclusion: Managing Dual Priorities

Security and delivery each carry crucial responsibilities. When their mandates collide, the answer is not compromise—it’s alignment. Through contextual policies, shared governance, and risk-aware flexibility, SLAs can become tools for coordination, not conflict.

Key question for leaders: Do your SLAs reflect real business priorities, or are your teams still negotiating speed and safety at the eleventh hour?