How a competency matrix helps team development
Good afternoon, dear friends. I am Sergey Bondarev, Director of Data Management and Director of Analytics Solutions at First Freight Company (FGC). Our company is actively developing, which requires our teams to create new subject areas of analytics, implement transformation projects and create new functionality for data processing.
Our team is growing and adding new members. When a team grows beyond the size of “two pizzas”, maintaining its previous manageability and efficiency requires certain efforts. Undoubtedly, the basis of manageability is compliance with standards, planning and development processes. Here you can get carried away, weighing down internal work processes to the point of impossibility of compliance, personally I know such examples. But, as is known, the complexity of work processes is a consequence of attempts to hack and bypass them by participants. Therefore, the issue of manageability can be solved differently: not through process requirements, but by managing the requirements for team members. That is, develop the competencies of team members, while leaving simple and convenient work rules.
The life cycle of an employee in a team can be divided into three stages:
selection and recruitment;
adaptation, development and movement within the company;
retention while leaving.
Often, different types of competencies are decisive at each stage. In hiring, preference is usually given to candidates demonstrating hard skills, i.e. professional skills. Vertical growth is determined by soft skills. When leaving, the determining criteria for retention are usually acquired skills, for example, knowledge of a specific system, especially if they are unique, presented in the singular. Thus, in the conditions of team growth, the manager must ensure competency management at the system level. The competency management process allows you to build a clear logic of grades and promotions for the team, avoid employees who pose a clear threat to teamwork at the entrance, ensure knowledge sharing and “elimination of illiteracy” – a phenomenon when an employee within one department does not know what a colleague sitting at the next table is doing. I will share my experience of how this is arranged with us.
The system is based on the so-called competency matrix. The vertical competency matrix represents the entire set of knowledge required for the department to perform its functions, and is compiled according to the MECE (McKinsey) principle. The horizontal axis represents grades from specialist to department head. The intersection indicates the target level of knowledge for the relevant competency. This is how it is with us.
Competencies are presented in three categories:
Hards. Knowledge of technology, knowledge of software, academic knowledge, but not just on the tool, but on the specific area of its application used in our production process. For example, Optimization of the Qliksense application data model, procedural extensions of PL/pgSQL, Postgresql cluster administration on Patroni, load distribution across NiFi nodes, etc.
Soft skills. There are quite a few. But since their assessment is quite subjective, I have identified several manifesting manifestations that an employee of our department should have:
customer focus, in the absence of which the employee’s communication will be corrected by his manager with enviable regularity;
systems thinking, without which the team will spend months eliminating technical debt behind the “Agile adept who hacks processes”. Many of you probably have similar examples;
focus on team results (especially important).
Acquired skills. This is specific knowledge applicable to the organization and allowing to perform functions. For example, knowledge of the logic of the control mechanism of our warehouse, the organization of the BI platform data, the general production process and artifacts of the work of related departments.
For each of the competencies, its leader is assigned – an employee who demonstrates expert qualities. For soft skills, we took existing corporate competencies to enable auditability of assessments from colleagues from HR.
At first we wanted to use a single matrix for the department, but it was too bulky to work with. In the end, we made matrices by department.
We assessed the employees based on the compiled matrix and drew conclusions. Firstly, we identified competencies presented in the singular, while the functionality with their application received noticeable development and distribution. Secondly, we confirmed the fact that the employees of our teams, noticeably exceeding the requirements for hardware and some software, nevertheless have a rather poor understanding of what is happening outside their team. The result of the assessment went into the KPI of managers for organizing cross-functional training.
The competency matrix is a good basis for reviewing the position and forming a team through assessment. I will tell you about my own principles of organizing a team:
Software and hardware are equally important. All positions require the necessary software. An employee who clearly does not meet the software requirements will not pass the selection to us either from the market or through internal rotation. And the higher the position, the more dominant certain software is.
In order to move up vertically to the role of a leading specialist, you need to either pump up your hardware in your main specialization or master a related role at the specialist level. A business analyst who can develop BI products is sometimes more productive than two separate employees. A leading specialist is an expert in his or her area of expertise who can and does train a team.
The head of the department must be at least a specialist in one of the team roles. He must also have clearly expressed team-building competencies. Personally, I am a supporter of developing managers from among the team members. I would like to separately stipulate that this is always individual.
Our competency assessment system is well-coordinated with the corporate system of individual development plans. The employee development plan is formed based on the employee's competency assessment, which allows us to understand growth areas and select the best tools for training and development.
Using a competency matrix will enable team members to improve their existing skills, learn new things from colleagues, and generally improve teamwork. This eliminates the situation where the entire team's work depends on one project participant and allows all specialists to grow. Write in the comments if your teams have competency matrices.
