Aligning ISO 9001 with the new ISO/IEC 20000-1

Management system requirements in ISO 9001 are defined in 5 sections:

Section 4 – Quality management system

Section 5 – Management responsibility

Section 6 – Resource management

Section 7 – Product realization

Section 8 – Measurement, analysis and improvement

Only section 7 provides requirements for service design and delivery. The remaining sections provide requirements for the management system framework. Now let’s look at the structure of ISO 20000-1:2011. Section 4 (Service management system general requirements) is essentially a concise version of sections 4, 5, 6 and 8 of ISO 9001:2008. So, an ISO 9001 certified organization should have a robust foundation established for their service management system.

Now, an organization could just consider revisiting the implementation of section 7 (ISO 9001) requirements with the help of ISO 20000-1. This is essentially an elaboration of “Product realization” using IT services specific processes. So, just replace section 7 of ISO 9001 with sections 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of ISO 20000-1 and your Quality Management System (QMS) will become a Service Management System (SMS). It makes good business sense to align these two standards.