How we got into the Matrix and started living in it
Hello! This is Elena Platkovskaya. At SM Lab, which is part of Sportmaster, I work on building and optimizing IT processes.
When I came to the company, there was no understanding of what skills the employees of our department, which had recently been formed at that time, should have. Would it be a unified set or different for each? What and how is it important to “pull up”, and what are we indisputably great at? Is there a need to conduct a skill review? It was not clear what to do to move from one career level to another. And when it was time to recruit newcomers, we completely stumbled over different understandings of who we were looking for. Thoughts were in the air, but were not described and formalized.
About the Matrix
In previous companies I worked closely with Competency matrix – a document that describes what a specialist holding a certain position and level should know and be able to do. The more experienced he is, the “plumper” his Matrix is, that is, the more he knows and can do. It helps to navigate what needs to be learned and honed in practice in order to grow from a junior, for example, to a mid.
Using my experience, I compiled the first version of the Competency Matrix for the department – it turned out to be a comprehensive set of skills, hard and soft. In the second version, it was divided into 3 levels of skill proficiency: basic, fundamental and advanced. Opposite each, we indicated a list of publications, books and other useful links for study.
Now it has become clearer to us what exactly needs to be studied and applied in practice to move to the next level. As a bonus, the matrix helped to synchronize the terminology, as well as make the criteria for selecting new employees more transparent.
Welcome to the club
The next question we faced was who would mentor us? And right after that, how to allocate time for training?
An idea was born – why not come up with a system that would teach itself? Without involving budgets and external speakers. This is how Level up Club appeared – a community in which colleagues help each other improve their skills.
The point is that an employee who has planned to delve into a topic from the Matrix studies it independently and tells the entire department what he has learned. Hardware or software – he chooses himself. In essence, he studies tons of information sources “for himself and for Sasha”. This is how we grow ourselves and develop our colleagues, saving each other’s time.
Format
We chose the simplest one – an informal online meeting of reasonable duration. We haven't gone beyond 80 minutes on the technically complex topic of JQL formulas yet. We spent less than an hour on feedback frameworks, and that's with three practical tasks that we collectively completed in Miro during the meeting.
We do not strictly fix the frequency, we conduct them as soon as one of us is ready to share knowledge. For future generations, we have included viewing recordings of our club meetings in the Onboarding program.
And this is a slide from the presentation of the club idea to colleagues:
What's already in the piggy bank?
Three meetings have taken place and preparations are underway for four more.
The first topic we took was skill. providing and receiving feedbackbecause we encounter it every day. First, we talked about why it is important and what goals it pursues. We settled on the fact that for our team, feedback is suitable not only as a tool for improving the quality of work, but also a great motivator. We approached the theory without fanaticism and did not delve into all the almost 20 ways of providing feedback. We talked about two, the most applicable specifically in our work.
Our Competency Matrix contains a rather weighty block about Features of working in IT. There are employees in the department who have recently joined us and previously had little or no contact with the intricacies of work in this area. Therefore, only they were invited to the second meeting and leveled up in their knowledge of IT at the “Basic” level. Colleagues received a foundation that they can then supplement themselves.
At the third meeting we delved into the intricacies of working with formulas of the tool that we use often – some to a lesser extent, some to a greater extent. This covered the advanced level of mastery Jira Structure and writing JQL queries.
Bottom line
The competency matrix helped us make adjustments within the team, align our terms, understand what needs to be done to grow in skills and move to the next level of expertise.
We use Level up Club as a tool – we train ourselves, train colleagues, and at the same time pump up our presentation and public speaking skills.
Overall, it is too early to talk about great successes and now we are riding on enthusiasm. By the way, club meetings give us the opportunity to be in a relaxed atmosphere. Since we do not see each other in the office, this is valuable and brings positivity to the work process. For example, it was fun to vote in our chat for the community logo. In the end, we use the one you see in the picture above.
But the most important thing is that we really learn a lot of new things and save an insane amount of time on upgrading skills.
If anyone has similar experience of creating a community, write in the comments, we definitely have something to talk about.
