ISO 20000 is the international standard for IT Service management.

The standard actually comprises two parts: ISO/IEC 20000-1 and ISO/IEC 20000-2. ISO 20000-1 is the 'Specification for Service Management, and it is this which is certifiable against. ISO 20000-2 is the ' Code of practice for Service Management', and descibes best practices, and the requirements of Part 1.

What Was BS15000?

ISO 20000 is in fact based upon an original pair of documents, BS15000-1/2, which were published by BSI in 2002 and 2003 respectively. An earlier version of BS15000-1 was first published in 2000. Even this, however, was not the earliest iteration. As far back as the 1980's a BSI group called the 'Service Management Group' was at work defining ITSM processes.

An example of this work is provided by the following diagram, which illustrates the state of play in 1998:

The Standard Evolves

By the time the new release of BS15000 was published in 2002, the framework had been harmonized with other international standards, to embrace the familiar PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). This approach is illustrated below:

The scene was thus set for ISO 20000, which was published at the end of 2005.