ISO 20000
What is ISO 20000?
ISO/IEC 20000 is the first worldwide standard specifically aimed at IT Service Management. It describes an integrated set of management processes for the effective delivery of services to the business and its customers.
ISO 20000 is aligned with and complementary to the process approach defined within ITIL from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).
ISO 20000 consists of two parts:
ISO 20000-1:2005
is the formal Specification and defines the requirements for an organisation to deliver managed services of an acceptable quality for its customers. The scope includes:
- Requirements for a management system
- Planning and implementing service management
- Planning and implementing new or changed services
- Service delivery process
- Relationship processes
- Resolution processes
- Control processes
- Release processes.
ISO 20000-2:2005
is the Code of Practice and describes the best practices for Service Management processes within the scope of ISO 20000-1. The code of Practice will be of particular use to organisations preparing to be audited against ISO 20000 or planning service improvements.
ISO 20000 is increasingly seen as the quality standard for IT Service Management and many companies are striving to adopt ISO 20000, not only for their own benefit but also to help qualify and choose suppliers and partner organisations.
Any organisation is able to claim compliance with an industry standard such as ISO 20000 and may put such claims in their documentation and other collateral.
However, it is clearly more valuable for such claims to be independently verified as part of a formal certification scheme. ISO 9000 and BS 7799/ISO 17799 are examples where such certification schemes have already been established.
itSMF created, and now manages the ISO 20000 IT Service Management Certification Scheme (the scheme) which provides this independent verification against ISO 20000. Operation of the scheme is closely monitored by itSMF to ensure consistency of implementation.
Why would I consider ISO 20000 Certification?
Every organisation should have some form of standard in how they manage and provide a service, but this is rarely the case, until ISO 20000 was launched. Having an organisation compliant with the standard can mean:
- A more competitive business
- Aligned IS/IT strategy with the overall business strategy
- Best Practice IT Service provision
- Managed and reducing risk
- Managed and reducing costs
- Faster time to implement change
- Improved reliability and availability of service, leading to improved customer satisfaction
- Continual Improvement built into the processes
- Suppliers and partners will become more integrated and service focused
- Possibility of benchmarking with other organisations.
