Understanding IT Capability with SFIA

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) is receiving considerable global interest as a framework that provides a consistent and clear understanding of IT professional capability for the purposes of resource planning, recruitment, career development and organisational improvement.

This week we had Simon Roller, Managing Director of Australian-based Adaps Consulting, work with us to deliver SFIA training for our clients. As a SFIA Accredited Consultant and a Council Member with the SFIA Foundation, Simon Roller also delivered a presentation ‘Understanding IT Capability with SFIA’ to members of our community on Tuesday evening. The presentation discussed the tangible benefits of using SFIA in organisations, based on his experience working with organisations in New Zealand and Australia.

A summary of some of the points of his presentation is provided here:

Context

• SFIA is a simple and clean framework that connects an organisation’s IT operating model with skills and people
• SFIA focuses on the business IT skills that an organisation or individual needs
• It includes 96 skills within six families: strategy and architecture, business change, solution development and implementation, service management, procurement and management support, and client interface
• For each skill there are 7 skill levels. Levels one, two and three people perform tasks under supervision. Levels four and five people enable and advise others. Level six and seven people are at senior levels setting strategy and mobilising others
• Assessments and questions can be used to validate the level that people are performing at for a particular skill.

Case studies

Organisations that are implementing SFIA as a system are achieving major benefits. Simon presented a number of case studies, from organisations that he and Adaps Consulting have worked with to show how SFIA adds value:

• An Australian government organisation had merged together a number of government agencies. Using SFIA to map the IT skills that were required for the combined department, and then assessing the skills that the combined teams had, the department was able to systematically identify the areas of skill overlap and skill gap.
• A large European IT platform and services company was able to save 30% of their IT operational costs by transforming the skills of their people through recruitment, training and effective use of their staff, based on the SFIA framework.
• A major Australian bank implemented SFIA and mapped the skills they needed against the skills they had, and then mapped salaries against skill level. Identifying and resolving the ‘disconnects’ from this analysis saved the bank 30% of their IT operational cost.
• A parcel and logistics company, which had 500 IT role profiles was able to reduce this to 75 with the SFIA framework, cutting training and administrative costs and increasing staff satisfaction. Simon had a great phrase “applied knowledge rather than acquired knowledge”. SFIA is about the application of knowledge not the acquisition of knowledge. For this organisation they reduced their training and increased mentoring to help knowledge be applied in the workplace.

Pragmatic implementation

Simon spoke a little about getting started with implementing SFIA:

• The SFIA content can be downloaded free from the SFIA Foundation
• Those involved in implementing SFIA should attend training, to provide a consistent understanding and a shared language
• Undertake a skills assessment of your people based on SFIA framework
• Undertake role definition based on the SFIA framework
• SFIA can be an organisational change activity involving people and their jobs, so should not be run as a ‘skunk works’ activity. It will need involvement from senior management, HR and communications.

Many thanks for Simon for delivering this valuable presentation to our clients and community.