ISO says: technology is NOT a part of the management system

The Harmonized Structure of ISO contains the guidelines for all ISO writers, to be used in the development of Management System Standards. It is a courageous?attempt to solve the horrifying inconsistencies between so many of the existing ISO standards.

If you set a standard for all standards, it should be correct & sustainable, or else you’ll hard-code your error for a very long time.

Definitions are core to any architecture and, therefore, to any system. On?its website, ISO describes a management system as “the way in which an organization manages the interrelated parts of its business in order to achieve its objectives“.

Let’s have a look at some of the definitions in this Harmonized Structure.

Management system: set of interrelated or interacting elements of an organization to establish policies and objectives, as well as processes to achieve those objectives [ISO]

This means that a management system is at least composed of elements of the dimension ‘organization’.

Organization: person or group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its objectives

This says that organization is (only) composed of people, and that people have functions.

It is unclear what the exact meaning of the section “as well as processes to achieve those objectives” is. It may be one of these two:

1.???A management system is a set of elements of an organization AND a set of processes.

2.???A management system is a set of elements of an organization, and these elements can be used to establish policies, objectives, AS WELL AS processes.

The second option says that only people are part of the management system, but this may be caused by a poorly worded sentence. So, let’s give ISO the benefit of the doubt and interpret that the management system includes not only the people but also the processes.

But where does that leave the technology, as in the means used by these people when they execute the activities in their processes?

It seems that the ISO definition of management system is not a very operational one and that it is not based on Systems Thinking, although ISO uses the term ‘system’ many times in the Harmonized Structure.

This only demonstrates that ISO still carries the burden of the inconsistencies of standards that go in every direction, produced by so many different teams with so many different goals. My recommendation: hold on to the definition and specification of the USM Method that is built on Systems Thinking.

Management system: the coherent set of organization resources that you organize and coordinate to realize your goals effectively and efficiently [USM Method]

In that Systems Thinking approach, USM specifies the organization resources as the three essential components of the service provider’s system: people, process, and technology.

Rule number 1 of Systems Thinking says that no essential component can do what the system can. People cannot deliver services without executing processes and using technology. Technology cannot deliver services without automating processes. Etc.

Rule number 2 of Systems Thinking says that only the combination of the essential system components can deliver the performance of the whole, the system. In USM’s unique non-redundant process architecture, this then leads to the 8 USM workflow templates that any service provider can use to manage all of its service management activities.

I think this Systems Thinking approach provides a much better base for a sustainable service delivery future than the before-mentioned ISO definitions…. The ISO standards can then still be used as sets of practical requirements to be fulfilled by using the USM management system.

And that is one of the huge benefits of the USM Method: a really simple and consistent management system for any and all of these ISO standards, saving yourself huge amounts of effort, money, and time.