Another important task in the preparation stage of ISO20000 certification is research. For the entire organization, conducting sufficient and detailed research work will help to sort out the current status of IT service management in the organization, and at the same time, it will improve the awareness of all employees for certification and enhance members' understanding of ISO20000 in the organization. The importance of certification work has a certain positive effect. The work of this stage overlaps with the gap analysis work of the next stage to a certain extent, and can be carried out simultaneously. The difference is that the research before the official launch of the certification assumes part of the function of feasibility research, and at the same time, it mainly focuses on understanding and sorting out the status quo, and does not make too many comparisons with the ISO20000 standard terms, while the gap analysis is mainly based on the ISO20000 standard. Professional analysis methods and tools are used to conduct comparative analysis, find out the gap between the current situation of the organization and each clause in the ISO20000 standard, and then formulate improvement topics. The following is a brief introduction to several commonly used research methods in the certification preparation stage.

  1. Questionnaire survey

  Questionnaire survey is one of the most commonly used methods. The advantage is that the respondents can collect materials and organize relevant information in a targeted manner, and at the same time, the preparation time is relatively abundant. On the basis of the collected questionnaires, face-to-face interviews can be arranged to understand the important parts of the questionnaires.

  The questionnaire survey can be designed according to the characteristics of ISO20000, mainly including two parts, namely the management system and 13 management processes. The research scope of the management system part covers certification objectives, organizational structure, employee job description, personnel knowledge structure, documentation system, training system, internal audit and improvement plans. The research object of the management system is the senior management personnel of the organization. These personnel are usually also the overall quality management personnel of the ISO20000 system, or quality managers, who have management responsibilities for the entire system. The management process part has more content at the detailed level, including the definition, input, output, documentation, tools, and related content of each process. The research object of the management process is the management and technical personnel who are currently responsible for the relevant process or work in the organization, usually including the process managers, process coordinators and process executors in the ISO20000 system.

  2. Summary of personnel responsibilities

  In addition to the management system and management process, the division of responsibilities within the organization is also an important content that needs to be sorted out and mastered during the survey. It is recommended to use the "role & responsibility matrix" method to summarize and organize the functional division of all personnel in the organization by establishing a corresponding matrix of personnel and work content.

In general, the list of personnel roles and responsibilities is a highly extensible form of information aggregation. The visual style allows middle and senior managers in the organization to clearly understand the status quo of personnel functions in the organization, and it is also easy to make certain reasonable adjustments. .

  3. Tool use questionnaire

   An obvious fact is that organizations are increasingly reliant on automated tools, and large organizations often have a cobweb-like system of tool applications. It makes sense to aggregate and organize tool usage information during the preparation phase.

The purpose of    to sort out the tools is to lay the foundation for the gap analysis of the next stage of ISO20000 certification practice and the mapping of international standards through the overall understanding of the existing system. The content usually includes the system name, function, scope of use, person in charge, contact information, management files, and any information that the researcher wants to know.

  4. Radar chart

   Radar chart, as a common graphical analysis tool, can also play a certain role in the certification and preparation stages.

  Due to the inherent advantages of radar charts in gap analysis, we will introduce them in detail in the next chapter gap analysis (gapanalyze).

   The above mentioned methods are just some of the many research methods. The following aspects need to be clarified.

  (1) The results of the survey are not only useful in the certification preparation stage, but also play a good role in the process of gap analysis, process establishment, trial operation and even after passing the certification, the PDCA continuous improvement process within the organization.

   (2) "Personnel roles and responsibilities list" and "tool usage table" can become commonly used information records in the organization, which can be continuously updated and replaced in the PDCA process.

  (3) There is no need to stick to this form. In fact, these are just some cases. According to the characteristics of the organization and the advice of the consulting agency, various forms of research interviews and information collection can be carried out.