The majority of organizations recognize ITIL as a major contributor to Data Centre Effectiveness, but its success in the 1990s resulted in the establishment of an international standard in the 21st century, ISO/IEC 20000. This article provides advice for any organization considering ISO/IEC 20000 accreditation.
When embarking on an ISO/IEC 20000 implementation it is important to understand the journey could be long.
Although ITIL Version 3 has the centre stage, ITIL v2 is the foundation for the current ISO 20000 accreditation, it is strongly recommended to baseline how mature your current processes are before committing a large amount of time and obviously cost.
Many organisations use external consultancies to assess their ITIL processes with a view to utilising them to assist with their ITIL or ISO 20000 implementations or improvement projects.
For those who are new to ISO 20000, it is broken down into two parts, the ‘Shalls’ (ISO/IEC 20000-1) and the ‘Shoulds’(ISO/IEC 20000-2). In order to achieve the accreditation your organisation must conform to and show evidence of achieving the ‘Shalls’.
For example each process shall establish a policy, process/plan and procedure, not having any of these documents available and demonstrating their implementation for external auditors, will result in failure to achieve accreditation.
The ‘Shoulds’ (Part 2) is to be used in conjunction with the ‘Shalls’ (Part 1). Typically many organizations are already using elements of Part 2, normally without formally recognising it. For example competence, awareness and training, most staff are performing work to a level of competence, they are ITIL aware and some may have been ITIL trained.
Perhaps one of the biggest questions to an organization pursing the ISO/IEC 20000 accreditation objective is should my staff pursue ITIL Version 3 qualifications or those of ITIL Version 2.
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