About Best Practice

By adopting Service Management Best Practice an organisation will more likely achieve consistent IT outcomes in everything from software integration through to consultancy, training and qualifications.

Best Practice IT Service Management has been designed to be adaptable to any organisation and any mix of IT resources. It provides a blue-print for service development, which IT departments can use to focus in implementation.

The itSMF plays a pivotal role in the development of ISO/IEC 20000 and has a continual and significant input into the development of ITIL®.

For more information visit:

• ITIL - IT Infrastructure Library®

• ITIL Qualifications

• ISO/IEC 20000

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What is ITIL®?

The IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) is a collection of best practises in IT Service Managment (ITSM) providing a framework which can be utilised in any organisation to improve capabilities and service management.

ITIL does not set in stone every action required on a day-to-day basis because this will vary from organisation to organisation.

Being a framework, rather than a cook book that requires exact ingredients, ITIL provides an outline and models that specify the goals, general activities, inputs and outputs of the processes that can be incorporated and generally used in varying degrees of maturity in most organisations.

ITIL provides a proven method for planning and implementing common processes, roles and activities with appropriate internal references that define the lines of communication between these processes.

More importantly, ITIL provides a common language that is an essential ingredient in the successful implementation of any improvement programme.

Why is ITIL so successful?

ITIL embraces a practical approach to service management - do what works. And what works is adapting a common framework of practices that unite all areas of IT service provision towards a single aim - that of delivering value to the business. The following list defines the key characteristics of ITIL that contribute to its global success:

• Vendor-neutral - ITIL service management practices are applicable in any IT organization because they are not based on any particular technology platform or industry type. ITIL is owned by the UK government and is not tied to any commercial proprietary practice or solution.

• Non-prescriptive - ITIL offers robust, mature and time-tested practices that have applicability to all types of service organization. It continues to be useful and relevant in public and private sectors, internal and external service providers, small, medium and large enterprises, and within any technical environment. Organizations should adopt ITIL and adapt it to meet the needs of the IT organization and their customers.

• Best practice - ITIL represents the learning experiences and thought leadership of the world's best-in-class service providers.

• Positive ROI - ITIL is successful because it describes practices that enable organizations to deliver benefits, return on investment and sustained success. ITIL is adopted by organizations to enable them to:

  • Deliver value for customers through services

  • Integrate the strategy for services with the business strategy and customer needs

  • Measure, monitor and optimize IT services and service provider performance

  • Manage the IT investment and budget

  • Manage risk

  • Manage knowledge

  • Manage capabilities and resources to deliver services effectively and efficiently

  • Enable adoption of a standard approach to service management across the enterprise

  • Change the organizational culture to support the achievement of sustained success

  • Improve the interaction and relationship with customers

  • Coordinate the delivery of goods and services across the value network

  • Optimize and reduce costs.

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​​ISO/IEC 20000 Qualifications

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ISO/IEC 20000-2 2012 edition - what's changed?

The 2012 update to the ISO/IEC 20000 Part 2 (Implementation Guide) has now been released, so what's new.  ISO and IEC summarise the changes as follows:

1. Closer alignment to ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001

2. Changes in terminology to reflect international usage

3. New guidance on governance of processes operated by other parties;

4. More guidance on defining the scope of the SMS

5. More guidance on continual improvement of the SMS and services

6. More guidance on the design and transition of new or changed services

But what do each of these points mean in practice?

Well, closer alignment with other International Standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001 allows for easier integration of management systems, eliminating the need for multiple processes that are the same or similar across management systems. This saves not only time and effort, but also reduces the cost of management systems implementation.

Basically, the structure of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard is now more aligned with that of other management system standards.

The changes in terminology in this part of the standard are very much to bring Part 2 into line with the terminology used in Part 1, the specification for a service management system.

New guidance has been added to Part 2 in the form of a section entitled Governance of Processes Operated by Other Parties. This section specifically deals with the governance processes operated by other parties, both internal and external.

This process shouldn't be confused with Supplier Management as it is totally new. It deals with the control of service management processes from a governance perspective, rather than a management perspective.

With the addition of new guidance on scoping an SMS in Part 2, ISO and IEC have added extra parameters to be considered when writing a scoping statement. They additionally suggest a number of practices to follow when writing a scoping statement. The standard now also cross-references to Part 3 of ISO/IEC 20000.

The new guidance in Part 2 of the standard on continual improvement of an SMS suggests a more coherent and overarching approach to continual improvement than in the first edition of the Part 2. Guidance on creating an overarching policy for continual improvement has been added to the standard as well guidance on integrating continual service improvement into all process documentation.

Part 2 now also suggests having a documented procedure for accountability and authorities for all improvement activities. Outputs for continual improvement are also detailed, and Part 2 now also cross-references to Part 4 of ISO/IEC 20000.

Finally, the 2012 edition goes into a lot more depth in providing guidance on managing the design and transition of new or changed services. Whereas the first edition of the standard gave just high level, abstract considerations, the 2012 edition goes into a lot more depth on the subject, providing quite in-depth guidance on the Design and Transition of New or Change Services process.

Part 2 gives an in-depth an explanation of the requirements in Part 1 of the standard. It also explains the concepts and the intent behind the process.

All in all, the new version of ISO/IEC 20000-2 should be welcomed.

IT Service Management

ISO/IEC 2000 eases transition to cloud computing for Orange by Axel Haentjens

Cloud computing - the delivery of computation, software applications, data access, management and stoarge resources "from the cloud", i.e from infrastructure at a remote locatio, has grown into a multi-billion euro market since its birth in 2007.  Finding a global information and communications technology (ICT) provider certified to ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011, Information technology - Service management - Part 1: Service management system requirements, is one way to mitigate the doubts and fears of organisations evaluating their entree into the world of cloud computing.

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The article will retain the author by-line "By Axel Haentjens" and will include the attribution  "Originally published in ISO Focus+ May 2012.  Reproduced with the permission of the International Organization for Standardization.  © ISO 2012 All rights reserved." 

ISO/IEC 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/IEC 20000 is aligned with and complementary to the process approach defined within ITIL from OGC and consists of two parts:

ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005

ISO/IEC 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/IEC 20000-2:2005

ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 is the Code of Practice and describes the best practices for Service Management processes within the scope of ISO/IEC 20000-1. The Code of Practice will be of particular use to organisations preparing to be audited against ISO/IEC 20000 or planning service improvements.

ISO/IEC 20000 is increasingly seen as the quality standard for IT Service Management and many companies are striving to adopt ISO/IEC 20000, not only for their own benefit but to help qualify and choose suppliers and partner organisations.   Any organisation is able to claim compliance with an industry standard such as ISO/IEC 20000 and may put such claims in their documentation and other collateral.