engineering

Skill framework for developers

This framework sets out skill competencies and levels of expected skill for different levels of software developer working at NICE Digital.

What is a competency?

A competence represents the skills, knowledge and behaviours required to perform effectively in a given job, role or situation

Why use competencies?

We use competences to help define what an individual should be doing and how they should go about doing it, to meet the needs of their role. Competences are based on how individuals carry out the tasks their job involves.

How do we use competencies?

Competences focus on factors that contribute to individuals’ and organisations’ success. They provide a set of statements that can be used to show achievements and identify learning needs or gaps in people resources. Competences are a vital part of many people-management processes, helping organisations perform better .

• Recruitment – by providing fair and unbiased criteria (conditions) and for choosing who to employ, and making sure everyone is assessed against the same framework.
• Performance management – by providing fair and unbiased statements to help managers and their staff discuss and assess performance
• Learning and development – by helping the organisation and individuals identify areas to prioritise their learning and development needs.
• Career development – by providing clear expectations of what skills, knowledge and behaviours are needed at each level and by showing individuals how they can develop their career by building on their current skills.

Principles

We think it’s important for a skill competency framework to be:

• Simple and clear to use
• Based on existing skill frameworks as much as possible (do not reinvent the wheel)
• Relevant to the technologies on our technology radar and technical roadmap
• Actionable to aid with career development planning
• Supportive of diverse individual preferences - not overly prescriptive
• Open for edits via pull request

Skill framework

Our framework is based on the UK government Digital, Data and Techology (DDaT) capability framework for the technical job family of software developer. Based on feedback from our team, we have added example skills and behaviours which are relevant to how we work at NICE Digital. We have also added a few skills that we believe are missing from the framework but are relevant to working at NICE Digital, such as developing others and community participation.

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