This part of ISO/IEC 15504:2004 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.