ISO/IEC 20000

OVERVIEW

ISO/IEC 20000 is the first international standard for IT service management that essentially allows organizations to demonstrate excellence and prove best practice in IT service management. It is based on and intended to supersede the earlier BS 15000.

ISO/IEC 20000, like its BS 15000 predecessor, was originally developed to reflect best practice guidance contained within the ITIL^®(Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework, although it equally supports other IT service management frameworks and approaches including Microsoft Operations Framework and components of ISACA's COBITframework.

The standard allows IT service provider organizations to achieve conformance to a service management system which requires them to continually improve their delivery of IT services. ISO/IEC 20000 was first released in 2005 and is now at the second edition ISO/IEC 20000 Certification Roadmap

The ISO/IEC 20000 Certification Scheme has been developed to offer a tiered examination structure with basically two levels of qualification:

• ISO/IEC 20000 Foundation
• ISO/IEC 20000 Practitioner
• ISO/IEC 20000 Auditor

ISO/IEC 20000 Benefits
Benefits for Individuals:

• Understand the relationship between ISO/IEC 20000 standard and ITSM and use best practices in ITSM to apply appropriate methods within an organization.
• Understand, identify and explain the potential issues regarding applicability, eligibility and scoping to assist in certification readiness assessment and certification audits as well as advising on the implementation of continual improvement processes.
• Produce a gap analysis supported by an improvement and implementation plan.
• Describe the scope, aims and use of the ISO/IEC 20000 specification and code of practice, through an understanding of the roles of the component parts of the standard.
• Recognize the need to plan and implement ITSM processes, report on the IT services and major metrics of the ITSM processes, schedule and conduct regular reviews, assessments and audits and plan for continual service improvement.

Benefits for Organizations:

• Establish an on-going culture of continual improvement and learning within an organization, providing a target to achieve and maintain. This leads to continual improvement in the quality of IT services provided and increased business and customer confidence in the service provider and their ability to deliver.
• Ensure that organizations focus on the implementation of a set of integrated processes and solutions that are appropriate, suitable and effective in meeting the needs of the business processes, the customers and the users they serve.
• Increase the rate of change and the productivity of staff and the use of their skills and expertise. This in turn leads to reduced long-term costs and a reduced risk of being unable to meet business objectives.
• Enable organizations to adopt a structured approach to service management based on best practice guidance, allowing them to better understand their business and their needs, their roles and their processes. This leads to an improved reputation, relationships, inter-working and communication with their business and customer contacts.
• Enable organizations to internally assess their processes and activities against international standards as a method of identifying and implementing improvements.
• To be independently, externally audited for compliance using a scheme and standard that is internationally recognized and respected.