What are the challenges faced by organizations in Selection of Standards for Certification?

CMMI FAQ 0

14th June, 2014

Historically, we are at a point of time where a large number of standards for certification are co-existing. In earlier times, it used to happen that the organizations initially started with ISO 9001 (focus on quality), then became conscious of environment and adopted ISO 14001 (focus on environment) and further progressed to acquire health and safety OHSAS 18001 (focus on occupational health and safety) certifications. This was the pattern that was followed for formal certification programs adopted by organizations – starting with ISO 9001, then ISO 14001 and then OHSAS 18001. This was the trend in early 1990s. With the passage of time we have seen publishing of sector-specific and / or domain (knowledge) specific standards like ISO / TS 16949 (focus on automotive quality), AS 9100 (focus on aerospace quality), ISO 27001 (focus on information security), ISO 20000-1 (focus on IT Service management), ISO 22301 (focus on business continuity), ISO 50001 (focus on energy management), ISO 26262 (Functional safety), ISO 20121 (event sustainability), etc…. this list is much longer.. . Other than the ISO Standards, we have process models and frameworks that originate from various institutional mechanisms, for e.g., CMMI, the process model framework from the CMMI Institute, Carnegie Mellon, USA., etc.

The organizations are really facing a challenge in deciding which standards framework to adopt and when. Most of the times, the need is being driven by requirements from the market or from the customer. It would have been much better if the decision to adopt a standards-framework is based on the organizational introspection or internal focus. Further, time has come wherein the customer or market should evaluate the organization not on the basis of the certification(s) it has acquired but on the basis of its performance on the established best practices. It won’t be wrong to say that the customer or market should evaluate the organizations on the basis of self-assessment or an evaluation system devised by them prescribing to specific needs instead of just on the basis of certifications they carry.