ITIL and ISO 20000

ISO 20000 does not offer specific advice on how to design your processes. It is rather a set of requirements which must be met in order to qualify for certification.

This is where ITIL comes into play: ITIL (especially the new version 3) is strongly aligned with ISO 20000 and offers a rather detailed collection of best practices. As a result, ITIL V3 is a very good basis for developing ISO 20000 compliant processes.

On this Page:

What is ISO 20000?

ITIL provides guidance on what should be done in order to offer the clients of an IT organization adequate IT Services to support their business needs. ITIL certifications are available for individuals but until recently there was no way for an IT organization to prove that it is working along the ITIL recommendations.

The ISO 20000 standard was conceived to fill this gap. Initiated by the two organizations itSMF and BSI (British Standard Institute), it is modeled upon the principles of ITIL, and for the first time offers IT organizations the possibility to become certified.

Organizations seeking to become certified against ISO 20000 must fulfill certain requirements, as outlined in ISO/IEC 20000, Part 1: Specification – these are the mandatory requirements which must be fulfilled by organizations in order to be compliant with the standard.

There is also a second part of the standard (ISO/IEC 20000, Part 2: Code of practice), which contains suggestions for organizations who want to become certified. The guidelines of the second part are not strictly mandatory.

The third part (ISO/IEC TR 20000, Part 3: Guidance on scope definition and applicability of ISO/IEC 20000-1), introduced in 2009, provides guidance on scope definition, applicability and demonstration of conformity. ISO/IEC TR 20000-3 supplements the advice in ISO/IEC 20000-2.

[top]

Central Requirements of ISO 20000

In a nutshell, the two central requirements of the ISO 20000 standard are as follows:

Use of a management approach in line with the ISO management standard ISO 9001:2000, based upon the principles of business process management and aimed at continuous quality improvement
Alignment of the IT processes with the requirements of the ISO 20000 standard, which broadly corresponds to ITIL V3

Introducing ITIL is therefore one of the prerequisites for obtaining an ISO 20000 certificate, but not sufficient: It is equally important to be able to prove that IT processes are documented, actively managed, and continually improved.

From this it follows that a high-quality process documentation is at the centre of any certification project.

[top]

ITIL V3 as a Foundation for ISO 20000

Comparison between ITIL and ISO 20000

One reason for creating a new ITIL version - ITIL V3 - was to achieve better alignment with the ISO 20000 standard. The principle of continual improvement has found its way into the ITIL books, and the processes of ITIL V3 and ISO 20000 are now very much in line (for example, there is now a Security Management process in ITIL V3, as required by ISO 20000).

As a result, ITIL V3 offers a broad range of best practice recommendations which are the perfect basis for developing ISO 20000 compliant processes for your organization - the implementation of ITIL V3 is the best available route towards ISO 20000 certification.

[top]

Save time and money with ISO 20000 compliant Reference Processes

Our ITIL V3 Reference Model - the ITIL Process Map V3 - makes the ITIL V3 knowledge instantly available for your ISO 20000 project.

The reference model contains easy to understand, fully adabtable process and document templates in popular formats like Microsoft Visio, Excel and Word. The ITIL - ISO 20000 Bridge links every single ISO 20000 requirement to one or several of these templates.

With these tools, designing and documenting ISO 20000 compliant processes boils down to modifying the professionally laid out templates of our reference model, and you get better results more quickly.

[top]

How much does ISO 20000 cost?

What's the overall Cost for achieving ISO 20000 Certification?

Unfortunately, this question is hard to answer.

The formal ISO 20000 audit itself is usually a very small proportion of the total cost that your organization will incur. In most cases, closing the gaps to become ISO 20000 compliant is by far the biggest part of a certification project.

As a result, the total cost heavily depends on

the number of ITIL processes that are already implemented
existing certificates, like e.g. ISO 9000
the size of your IT organization
the complexity of your services

Once the certificate is awarded it will be valid for an initial period of three years. This means that regular re-certification audits and intermittent ISO 20000 assessments are required, so there are also ongoing costs to be considered.

[top]

Can Expenses for external Consultants be avoided? Should we seek external Support?

External support will be necessary at least for the ISO 20000 certification audit, as the audit can only be performed by a Registered Certification Body.

In most cases it is also advisable to seek the help of an experienced consultant, who will know what typically attracts the attention of auditors. So while we would not recommend attempting an ISO 200000 certification without external expertise, the point here is to keep consulting expenditures as low as possible.

The ITIL Process Map V3 was designed with this in mind, as it enables you to acquire a large amount of ITIL and ISO 20000 knowledge before deciding where external help is needed.

[top]

Downloads & Additional Information on ISO 20000

Live Demo	For a first introduction to the ITIL ISO 20000 Bridge, take a look at our live product demo.

Factsheet [.PDF]	The factsheet on the ITIL Process Map offers a description of our ISO 20000 compliant reference process model with its features, contents and use cases on two pages.

ISO 20000 and ITIL V3	A comparison between ITIL and ISO 20000 in broad terms can be found in the ISO 20000 section of our IT Process Wiki

Introduction [.PDF]	The PDF Introduction into ISO 20000 and the ITIL - ISO 20000 Bridge contains a comparison between ITIL and ISO 20000, advice on how to go about ISO 20000 certification, and details on how our ITIL - ISO 20000 Bridge supports your ISO 20000 initiative.

[top]