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Experience getting an international badge, or why software certification



“Previously, it was just a badge, which if desired, any ITSM system could get if only it corresponded to the processes of ITIL” (quoted from one forum)



Yes, it is these common opinions that can be heard when discussing the news about obtaining a certificate by the software manufacturer or the entire software certification process. Hopefully, over time, such replicas will become less, and the value of international recognition of software quality in our country will increase. This short story is about the unique project of the international certification of our software: about its prerequisites and key stages with numbers, about some difficulties and final results.





Who are we and what are certified?



Our company is fairly well known in the development market, first of all, with a solution for automating service management processes: IT, AXO, operations, etc. - Naumen Service Desk and a full-featured software solution for building large and medium-sized contact centers Naumen Contact Center .

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Just a couple of weeks ago, namely on May 19, we completed a rather lengthy project of certification of our product by the PinkVERIFY 2011 procedure for compliance with ITIL standards.



Some terms, abbreviations and information on certification of Service Desk class solutions



So that the attentive reader does not get confused in abbreviations and trademarks, we will pay a little more attention to what the certification itself is and who conducts it.



For certification, we applied to the Canadian company Pink Elephant (no one else does this certification anymore), which is the world leader in organizing conferences, training, and providing consulting services on ITIL and ITSM topics. This company is very famous in the global market: this year it celebrated its 25th anniversary, and its specialists took an active part in preparing and writing books of the famous ITIL library.



Back in 1999, the Pink Elephant developed the first international and still most well-known procedure for certifying ITSM software solutions called PinkVERIFY. As Pink Elephant employees themselves say, certification was created to help ITIL / ITSM practitioners choose software solutions that will help implement and automate IT service management processes. Starting from the very first versions of PinkVERIFY, an assessment of the certified solution for compatibility with ITIL is carried out according to three groups of criteria: functional requirements of a general nature, requirements for the automation of individual processes and requirements for organizing data exchange between processes.



Like ITIL itself, the PinkVERIFY certification process developed rapidly. Back in 1999, certification was carried out on only 4 processes. Currently, the number of certified processes has expanded to 15, while the requirements for automated processes themselves have been developed in accordance with the latest version of ITIL v.2011. It is also worth noting that the number of criteria for which the assessment is carried out has significantly increased compared with the certification for compliance with ITIL v.3, which we have already passed in 2008.



Why do we need certification and what does it give to customers?



Strictly speaking, an international certificate is a demonstration of the maturity of your decision. In addition, the PinkVERIFY certificate confirms the compliance of your product with the best international practices in the field of automation, and not just allows using the well-known ITIL label in your advertising. If you look at the client’s side, the certificate guarantees the readiness of the software to solve problems of a certain kind.



The cost of our solution is quite high, we are “playing” in the Enterprise segment and are already quite successfully competing with the decisions of major Western vendors. Competition in this segment requires compliance with certain rules, even if you work only in the market of Russia and the CIS. One of these rules is the availability of the PinkVERIFY certificate, which makes it relevant and important for vendors seeking to get their share in this market.



About the project and the team



In the summer of 2012, we released a completely updated version of our product - Naumen Service Desk v.4 - which was developed over 3 years. One can get acquainted with the possibilities of our solution on the site , I note only that the new version has become a logical continuation of product development, combining our experience and market knowledge with modern technologies.



By the time the project was launched in 2012, we had experience in passing certification with the previous, 3rd version of the product. In 2008, we were certified for compliance with ITIL v.3 in three processes (incident management, problem management and configuration management and service assets), and were among the first to receive the PinkVERIFY badge of that version.



Certification requirements are quite strict regarding the versions of the solution, so with the release of the 4th version we needed to go through the whole procedure again. In addition, the capabilities of the latest version of the product made it possible to try to get confirmation of a much larger number of processes. At this point, the certification scheme itself has also seriously changed, but more on that later.



The active stage of the entire project took us about 10 months in total. Without our first-class developers, testers and analysts, 4 people worked on the project. The bottom line in terms of improvements in the product, only two of the 342 requirements (this is 0.5% of all evaluation criteria for 9 certified processes) required us to change the program code. We managed to implement the rest of the requirements with customizations, without any improvements in business logic and functionality. Frankly, before the start of the project in terms of improvements, we had less optimistic expectations.



The principal differences of certification in 2008 and 2014



Was it easy to get certified a second time? In fact, there have been quite a few changes compared to 2008. In fact, for us, the new certification was a fundamentally new project. First of all, the changes affected the evaluation criteria themselves: there were almost 2 times more of them, and now they were developed in accordance with ITIL v.2011. In addition, all criteria became mandatory (previously, some of them were optional), and the number of reports required for each process increased. The procedure itself now also provides for the development of user documentation for most evaluation criteria.







How does the certification process go and what resources are required for this?



From the point of view of formal things, everything looks very simple: we declare in Pink Elephant an intention to certify a solution, indicate the processes for certification, determine with them the approximate dates for certification and the provision of all necessary forms and documents, as well as the dates for the remote demonstration.



In practice, the main part of the project is the preparation of a product for certification for all requirements. And this is really a large-scale work, including in terms of human costs.



Not all requirements can be interpreted unambiguously, and some of them are able to raise the question “what do they want from an automation tool?”. Of course, we need serious knowledge of the ITIL v.2011 library itself, both in terms of terminology and in terms of the recommendations themselves (many of the requirements literally copy the contents of the books). Therefore, if you want to certify your software according to the PinkVERIFY procedure, then the knowledge of ITIL of the Foundation level (course and basic level exam) will obviously not be enough. And, of course, the implementation of the requirements itself is not always a trivial task. Therefore, the solution must be flexible and functional. I can confidently say that on the previous, the third version of the Naumen Service Desk, we could hardly today confirm even 3 processes certified in 2008.



As for the procedure itself, the difficulty lies only in the fact that it is necessary to plan demonstrations long before they are held. The certifying company actually allocates its consultants and reserves their time. This should be done in 4-6 months, and they are very serious about the transfer of dates: penalties. By the way, we were assigned one of PinkElephant’s best consultants - the winner of the 2012 Pink Elephant's ITIL Practitioner of the Year award. The very same demonstration, taking into account the number of processes, stretched by almost 1.5 calendar months.



What processes have we certified, and what was the reason for their choice?



It was easy enough for us to choose. At the current stage, based on our experience - more than 330 completed projects of different scale and industry-specific specifics - there is a clear understanding of the maturity of the domestic market and its requirements in terms of the implementation of certain processes. According to the results of certification, we confirmed the compliance of our product with ITIL v.2011 in nine processes (an ITIL reader with no knowledge of ITIL can easily skip this list):



• Incident Management;

• Manage service requests;

• Problem Management;

• Manage change requests;

• Knowledge management;

• Event management;

• Service Level Management;

• Service catalog management;

• Service asset and configuration management.



Who knows, perhaps in the near future we will complete the list of certified processes. In any case, as in the development of our product, a lot depends on the requirements and wishes of customers.







Instead of conclusions



In conclusion, I would like to once again note:

1. International certification is a truly complex and complex project that every manufacturer can hardly go through, “just by paying a coin”. At least, we know nothing about this path.



2. PinkVERIFY certification, in view of its maturity, is a detailed and complex procedure, so its results can be accurately considered as a guarantee of the quality of automation equipment, at least in terms of certified processes.



3. Domestic software can compete on equal terms with the largest foreign counterparts.



ITIL is a registered trademark of AXELOS Limited.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/225693/



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