Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the Canadian Advisory Committee (CAC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T).

At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 15504-1:2004 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC.

1 Scope

This part of ISO/IEC 15504 provides overall information on the concepts of process assessment and its use in the two contexts of process improvement and process capability determination. It describes how the parts of the suite fit together, and provides guidance for their selection and use.

It explains the requirements contained within ISO/IEC 15504, and their applicability to performing assessments. Readers of this guide should familiarize themselves with the terminology and structure of the document suite, and then reference the appropriate parts of the suite for the context in which they propose to conduct an assessment. A more detailed description of the use of ISO/IEC 15504 is given in clause 4.