Systems and methods for providing service level agreement (SLA) definition and validation of SLA parameters are disclosed. An SLA may be defined with parameters and goals to achieve desirable business results for information technology (IT) software updates, configuration changes, security incidents, and other functions performed by IT personnel. Once a proposed SLA definition is available and before it is put into production use, historical data may be applied to the SLA. This historical application of data may be used to determine a level of conformance to the proposed SLA based on real world historical information for a particular customer. Because different corporations have different capabilities and expectations, a one-size fits all SLA may not be appropriate. A timeline visualization with zoom capability and state transition icons is disclosed. Disclosed, visualization techniques of proposed definitions may enhance the accuracy and acceptability of those proposed definitions.