ISO/IEC 20000 SMS general requirements documents

Which documents are required in SMS general requirements of ISO/IEC 20000? This chapter is about management involvment and adding quality control flavour to service management

Management responsibility

It is absolutely impossible to establish an elaborate service management system (SMS) without the active and unconditional support from the top management. The plan and the policy are just dead letters on paper (or screen) if they are not supported with the visible and constant vision-based commitment from the CEO and CIO. Therefore you have to ensure that the service management policy and plan are at least reviewed, approved and backed up by the top management.

Other parties

Most of service providers need to include other parties in order to complete some of the service management processes. It is very important that the provider can demonstrate the accountability and authority to manage these processes with an end-to-end visibility.



SMS General requirements documents

Documentation management

Two simple procedures have to be established here:

• Control of documents
• Control of records

It is a fact that service providers implementing ISO20k usually have a quality management system (QMS) based on ISO9001, and this makes it easier. If the QMS and the SMS are of the similar scope, then just delegate control of these procedures to the QMS. If it is not the case, just write and implement these two simple procedures. Not a rocket science.

Resource management
Parts of resource management requirements can also be delegated to other quality systems. It is very difficult to run a service management system without some essential Human resources practices, so if you already have some, integrate them into your SMS.

Establish and improve the SMS
This part of the norm is aligned with Deming's wheel: Plan-Do-Check-Act. Therefore the documents covering this part are:

• Service management plan
• Continual improvement policy and procedure
• Internal audit procedure and plans
• Audit records
• Nonconformities
• Corrective/preventive actions
• Management review
• Improvement proposals

 

ISO/IEC 20000 Design and transition of new or changed services documents

Change is hard. Service management people love the Status quo. Introducing new services in your system takes a lot of time, resources, knowledge. Even the slightest changes on an existing service can have adverse impact on the business process.

Large changes are often done by the technology specialists from architecture or infrastructure departments. They usually don't care much about your service management methodologies and best practices, since they operate by their project management methodologies and frameworks. Some of the common infrastructure project management methodologies are "Nexting" (clicking the Next button until the server is installed), Run'n'gun and Quick'n'dirty. And voila - new service is ready for support.

This mentality can create barriers between departments and impact the business in a very bad way.
In order to overcome this, all stakeholders have to agree on set of rules for introducing new/changed service.

So this is what chapter 5 is all about. Policy, procedural documents and records that cover activities during the service design and transition.



Design and transition documents

Policy will describe the general rules of the game. I personally like to add a New/Changed service procedure which will describe the workflow and responsibilities. This ensures that everyone knows what to expect, minimizing the blame management playground.