ISO/IEC 29155-3:2015 provides general requirements and guidance for reporting processes and contents of typical reports within benchmarking activities of "the information technology (IT) project performance benchmarking framework" by prescribing:
- requirements and guidance for the reporting processes within the benchmarking framework;
- requirements and guidance for the contents of reports.
ISO/IEC 29155-3:2015 focuses on three major activities, i.e. "conduct benchmarking", "maintain repository", and "issue benchmarks" activities.
NOTE 1 These activities are selected, not only because the importance of the outcomes of these activities, but also the outcomes of these activities are the direct input for benchmarking users who execute "core benchmarking" activities. In addition, benchmarking users are not usually so deeply involved to these activities even though they need in-deep information to understand the benchmarking results or to select appropriate data (i.e. benchmarking repository and benchmarks).
ISO/IEC 29155-3:2015 also focuses on two types of reports in the benchmarking framework:
a) the benchmarking report, that describes the results of an instance of benchmarking;
b) the explanatory report, that provides complementary information about the released benchmarking repository or benchmark(s).
ISO/IEC 29155-3:2015 is intended for use by stakeholder(s) of IT project performance benchmarking (e.g. benchmarking user, benchmark provider, and benchmarking service provider).
NOTE 2 The following are examples of how this part of ISO/IEC 29155 can be used:
- by a systems and software acquirer (or a third-party agent), to define, order, obtain and evaluate an acceptable and creditable benchmarking report;
- by a benchmarking service provider, to produce a high-quality benchmarking report;
- by a benchmark provider, to provide complementary information about the released benchmarking repository or issued benchmarks.
It is out of the scope of this part of ISO/IEC 29115 to prescribe the particular names, formats, or explicit contents of the reports of the benchmarking activities.