{"id":100,"date":"2014-03-17T06:30:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T06:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2016-09-26T19:38:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T19:38:52","slug":"project-organisation-team-skills-and-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/project-organisation-team-skills-and-assessment\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Organisation – Team Skills and Assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier instalment we talked about Managing Engineers, with some recommendations of understanding the personality types and a brief introduction to the idea of Skills Frameworks. In this entry I\u2019d like to revisit skills frameworks<\/b> to look at some of the practical benefits<\/b> they can bring in organising a project team.<\/p>\n

Firstly, it should come as no surprise that the skills framework can be used as an objective assessment<\/b> tool, to gather the capabilities of your engineers in terms of the roles they have previously fulfilled, to what competence level and how recently.<\/p>\n

If we repeat this over a number of project teams, as a Resource Manager<\/b> for instance, then we have the basic material from which to derive a team<\/b> of individuals who have the appropriate combinations of skills for individual projects<\/b>… rather than just go for the people who have recently become available!<\/p>\n

As roles are usually made up of a set of skills, each performed at a certain competence level (accepting that these may be different inside different companies, or for different regulatory or market needs), it is a simple task to do gap analysis<\/b> between different roles and establish the obvious \u2018growth\u2019 route<\/b> to the next role from each particular role. Typically this is a move to a role where either a new skill has to be added (possibly at a low competence level) or the growth of a skill is required.<\/p>\n

As competence levels usually identify stages from the novice, through minimal supervision, to a supervisory role, then supervision of increasing numbers, on projects of increasing degree of difficulty, to expert… these increments are easy to judge (use the skills framework for regular periodic re-assessment). Some<\/b> skills degrade<\/b> with lack of use, so you may wish to ensure that sufficient continuous professional development is evident to maintain a skill (at the required competence level) that is not regularly practiced.<\/p>\n

Beware though, although competence levels<\/b> are typically identified numerically, these are labels<\/b> not values. Do not attempt to do some mathematical or numerically algorithmic assessment of skills and competence levels as roles may have different spans; A software architect at a level that needs supervision on a complex project, may not be equivalent to a software test engineer who is a team leader on a simple project. If your job descriptions, like many, include several roles, the numerical score will not deliver you \u201cthe most valuable person\u201d, or \u201cthe most loaded occupation\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is valuable<\/b>, however, is the recognition when a skill is unique<\/b>, or where you have very few individuals, as this relates to the fragility<\/b> of the organisation, as well as giving indications about the ability to deliver concurrent projects<\/b>. Weaknesses of these sorts should be the target of skills action plans, to generate, mentor or acquire the requisite additional strength. The reverse is also true, where skills are plentiful<\/b>, skill plans should look to diversify<\/b> those roles into different growth paths, or by increasing key individuals\u2019 competence levels.<\/p>\n

So at the absolute<\/b> levels you can appropriately partition your staff for roles they are suited, understanding their growth challenges and administering appropriate support. Over a period of time, however, you can also understand the rate of growth<\/b> by \u2018trending\u2019 the changes in assessment patterns (again not numerically, except possibly with competence levels within a skill, as part of a role of an individual\u2019s job!).<\/p>\n

Both absolute<\/b> and trend<\/b> information should help support individual training plans, ambition and career paths<\/b>. They can be used to set and assess targets<\/b>, used to inform on performance assessment<\/b> or suitability for promotion or awards, but again a note of caution that competence levels are labels and not those labels are not equivalent across skills; not all skills require equivalent intellectual or effort levels and roles depend on the product, process and market expectations; jobs are often a tailored mix of roles, especially when staff are in short supply. So a skill framework should not be used as a blueprint to \u2018cookie cutter\u2019 a set of team members for a project, or be used blithely across a population for comparison.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

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In an earlier instalment we talked about Managing Engineers, with some recommendations of understanding the personality types and a brief introduction to the idea of Skills Frameworks. In this entry I\u2019d like to revisit skills frameworks to look at some of the practical benefits they can bring in organising a project team. Firstly, it should … Continue reading Project Organisation – Team Skills and Assessment<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-organisation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sofintsys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}