ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011 is a service management system (SMS) standard. It specifies requirements for the service provider to plan, establish, implement, operate, monitor, review, maintain and improve an SMS. The requirements include the design, transition, delivery and improvement of services to fulfil agreed service requirements.

ISO 20000 and ITIL; ISO 20000 does not offer specific advice on how to design your processes. It is rather a set of requirements which must be met in order to qualify for certification. This is where ITIL comes into play: ITIL (especially version 3) is strongly aligned with ISO 20000 and offers a rather detailed collection of best practices. As a result, ITIL is a very good basis for developing ISO 20000 compliant processes.