ISO19770-1: 2017 – An Introduction
In June, Kylie Fowler and I completed the overhaul of the ITAM process kit to bring it into alignment with ISO 19770-1: 2017. I figured this would be a sprint of about six weeks’ worth of work. Two years later(!) and we finally got it over the line, to where the kit or a sub-section of it, is available to buy for your organisation to help accelerate their journey along the SAM maturity curve.
This was suitably lauded on LinkedIn. But among all the congratulatory posts, Peter Gerstbrien asked if the kit had been aligned to ISO 19770-8: 2020? I’m a member of Working Group 21 and this completely caught me out!
The goal of ISO 19770-8: 2020 is to demonstrate how a body of work aligns to ISO 19770-1: 2017. I know a challenge when I see one, and so off to the ISO store I went to invest in a copy of -8.
ISO 19770-1 & ISO 19770-8: The Challenge
ISO 19770-8 requires you to download an excel file with the requirements of -1 tabulated in a series of columns which you then correlate to your work. You then move to a second tab, and conduct a reverse correlation, where your work comes first in column order and then ISO 19770-1: 2017 requirements are aligned after that.
In theory, the two worksheets should be a mirror of each other 😊
As spreadsheets go, I’ve seen sexier(!). But to complete this exercise and defend it as I might at a viva, did provide “a warm glow” that Kylie and I had knocked this refresh out of the park.
Don’t believe me?! You can head over to the ISO Standards website and download the mapping exercise for yourself:
https://itamstandards.org/19770-8/
We are one of only two organisations in the world that have publicly mapped a body of work to ISO 19770-1: 2017 and ISO 19770-8: 2020.
ISO 19770-1: End Users: Take the test:
If you are paying for SAM Managed Services, can that managed service provider demonstrate they practice SAM to best-in-class standards? Or are they granting artistic licence to their marketing department? SAM Charter and ITAM Intelligence partner with a select number of SAM Service Providers to help augment their framework, governance and strategy portions of their services – but not all do. This leads me back to the heading of this article:
ISO 19770-1: 2017: don’t tell me, show me.
At this point, I would like to thank Kylie Fowler (for her supreme patience in tolerating me these last two years – and more besides!) and Peter Gertsbrien for bringing -8 to my attention: I promise to pay more attention in Working Group 21 meetings in future.
It would also be appropriate to thank Ron Brill and Trent Allgood in their capacity as ITAM Standards Committee Chairman and ISO SAM Standards Secretary, respectively. They made the ISO 19770-8 application process as smooth as could be.
