Recommendations for organisations considering ISO/IEC 20000 certification

 

 

The itSMF is the owner of ISO/IEC 20000 certification schema and our members are experienced in certification from both points of view as a certified or certifying organization. Therefore we have prepared following recommendations for candidates:

1. Familiarise yourself in detail with requirements of ISO/IEC20000 - Part 1: Specification for Service Management – a verifiable implementation of all defined processes is requested.
2. Preparation for certification is the individual project like any other therefore it should be considered as such:
   1. Define objectives you want to achieve by certification
   2. Allocate people and money
   3. Ensure support from top management of your organisation
   4. Develop the Implementation schedule with sufficient “buffers” (depending on size of organisation and rate of implementation of processes it ranges  from 6 to 36 months)
3. Ensure an appropriate training of the project team and key stakeholders in ISO/IEC 20000 (Training and certification for individuals is either Auditor or Consultant) or in ITIL (Training and certification for individuals is Foundation, Practitioner, Manager in V2 and Foundation, Intermediate, Expert, Master in V3)
4. Following the implementation of all processes perform an internal audit against requirements of the standard (All processes have to be demonstrably implemented and you must prove it by records from operation of these processes.)
5. Contact a Registered Certification Body, i.e. organisation that has been accredited to perform audit according to the ISO/IEC 20000 certification scheme and issue certificates to organisations meeting standard requirements. Current list of Registered Certification Bodies could be found on http://www.isoiec20000certification.com/lookuplist.asp?Type=6. Here you can ask for “Preliminary audit” performance or for information regarding to possible audit.
6. After the removal of all shortages discovered by preliminary audit which usually takes 1 to 2 months you will be ready for come up to “sharp audit”

Even after the successful certification do not forget that similarly to other ISO standards also this one is subject to regular audits when you have to prove continual improvement process according to PDCA (Plan – Do – Check – Act) cycle.