IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is accepted worldwide as a de facto reference for best practice processes in the management of IT services. It is only since a few years that service providers implementing ITIL are able to demonstrate their compatibility with a standard formally documented and available. In 2000, the BSI, British Standards Institution, officially defined the requirements for effective delivery of services to business and its customers, in the British Standard: BS 15000.

The first edition of BS 15000 was published in November 2000 on the basis of an earlier publication - DISC PD0005: 1998 - the Code of Practice for IT Service Management. BS 15000-1:2002 became the second edition, which was the result of experience and feedback from those who first adopted the first edition. The development of a certification then gave a strong impetus to the acceptance of the BS 15000 standard as official.
On 15 December 2005, the ISO, International Organization for Standardization, accepted the BS 15000 as an ISO International Standard: ISO / IEC 20000.
There are two ways to create an ISO standard: the creation through the cooperative involvement of other countries, or a fast path (fast-track) based on a national standard. For the acceptance of the British Standard, ISO has followed the fast path. Before acceptance as a standard ISO, BS 15000 had already been accepted and adopted by national standards bodies in Australia and South Africa. Acceptance of ISO / IEC 20000 saw its contents frozen for the next three years (15 December 2008).

Although the ISO / IEC 20000 does not formally include the ITIL approach, it describes an integrated set of management processes aligned and complementary to the approach defined in ITIL. The individual ITIL books offer extensive information and a guide to the topics addressed in the ISO / IEC 20000. The current edition of the formal specifications (ISO / IEC 20000-1) is a slightly adapted version of BS 15000-1. BS 15000 Code of Practice (BS 15000-2) was upgraded to ISO / IEC 20000-2 (Code of Practice). The Code of Practice gives a more detailed description of best practice and provides guidance and recommendations. This Code of Practice is not part of the requirements.

The standard is supported by a practical IT Service Management Self-assessment Workbook (BIP 0015). This publication is the updated version of the Self-assessment Workbook (PD0015), which was written for the BS 15000.