So how many standards are out there that could be considered part of the ITAM world? Let’s use a broad scope - and I hope and expect that you’ll help me fill in the list - I know I’ll miss many.

Well… there’s:
ITIL
COBIT (yes I know the capitalization is screwy but I never get it right anyway)
ISO/IEC 19770 - a draft standard for SAM
BS15000, to be replaced by ISO20000, still in draft

Well heck, we might as well throw in big chunks of ISO in general. ISO9001 for example.
BS7799 British Standard for information security that’s used worldwide

PD0005 and PD0015
ISO17799
IAITAM has developed a Best Practice Model (IBPM) for Asset Management
PRINCE2, PMI, Scrum, etc - lots of project management standards.

Plus there’s good old Six Sigma and similar quality and continuous improvement models.

And let’s not forget Messrs Sarbanes and Oxley! SOX 404, yeah!

Plus some industry-specific standards:

HIPAA - health information
Gramm-Leach-Bliley - banking
The SEC and OCC also audit and regulate many IT functions in the financial businesses.

Let’s stop here; the industry-specific list could get very long, but I think we can agree that there is no shortage of information about “what we’re supposed to be doing in IT” - right?

By the way - I realize many of these are not true “standards” in the textbook definition. Nevertheless, they are useful tools, frameworks, and ways to compare your organization against an organized, broadly adopted way of thinking. So I call them standards.

Speaking of comparing your organization against a standard - Evergreen provides a very cool ITIL Assessment and Roadmap - Framework and action plan within 45 days of engagement:

Evergreen Systems? ITIL Assessment and Roadmap

I can shamelessly plug this service because I helped build it! Plus, I have no shame…

Next time: so we have plenty of standards to follow… so what’s the holdup?

Technorati Tags: “standards” “asset management” “itil” “management”

—–