The IT Service Management standard, ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 is in the process of being updated.  Dr. Jenny Dugmore’s recent blog on the ITP Report  gives a first hand account of the progress being made.   

Dr. Dugmore makes reference to the results of a survey requested within the ITSM industry for input on changes and challenges to the current standard.  It is exciting to see that the input of the folks in the trenches can affect change.     It is also pleasing to see that integration of other ISO standards such as ISO/IEC 9001:2000 and ISO/IEC 27001-1:2005 are being seriously discussed and actions are being taken to find more common ground.  As Dr. Dugmore puts it   “We believe that knowing what the IT service management industry wants is hugely important.  When planning what we do to the current editions of ISO/IEC 20000 series we should have a clear view of what is needed (and wanted), not what we decide is a good idea.”

In the past, W. Edwards Deming, a leading force providing a methodology to introduce quality driven processes into organizations, used to do an exercise called the Red Bead Exercise to demonstrate the stability of predictive systems in organizations and how they can sometimes limit innovation. Recently, Jay Rollins, authored an article in TechRepublic’s IT Leadership newsletter, that pointed out that too much emphasis on standards can become a non-suportive environment within innovation driven companies. While maintaining a stable process driven company can assist a company’s efforts to comply with business continuity standards, information security standards and IT service delivery standards, Mr. Rollins does a nice job in this article to bring our attention to stay focused on that important balance between delivering a stable computing environment and the levels of innovations that so many companies need today to compete in global markets.

The lesson that Mr. Rollins claims that he gets from the “Red Bead Exercise” is not to be too strict with “foreign” software tools or hardware.  Do you agree with his position?

Click here to read this article.

On April 3, Dr. Jenny Dugmore posted on the ITP Report a great write up on the every pressing question of ITIL versus ISO 20000.    There are always questions on this topic and I am thankful for her consise writing to bring the difference up front and inform those of us interested, what’s on the horizon for ISO 20000-1.   Read the whole story and take time to view other entries made by Dr. Dugmore.