The Open Skills Framework is not designed to replace your current HR process it is designed to enhance it. We work for a large corporate the fight to change that process is one just not worth having. That said the engagement from our software development teams with the existing HR process is quite poor. At best they ignore it at worst they hate it, the main problem for this is that it does not go deep enough to look at an individuals skills and the lax implementation by most line managers do little to develop those unidentified skills.
We have attempted to start to put together something that improves these problems. In a true Agile way this framework is not designed to be hard rules. If something does not work, learn then change it.
When we were speaking to our development team there was a general consensus that the current PDP (personal development process) system offered little insight as to how the developers could progress with their careers. There was no real roadmap to show the progression required between their current role and the next level. There was also no way of just rewarding people for being bloody great developers, what if I don’t want to be a paper shuffling pointy haired boss? Are my 20 years of experience worth the same as a 5 year developer? We felt there was a need for change and hence this framework was born.
- Provide a framework to measure developer skills
- Create a way for employees to have improved personal and technical development
- Level field of measurement
- Provide a way to balance current salary to market rates
- Directly relate skill to remuneration - TO REMOVE?
- Increase employee retention by removing salary and career development as a reason for leaving
Well we figured we don’t have all the answers, some stuff we will get wrong some stuff we just have no idea about yet. The concept of producing an Agile and evolving framework was appealing, producing something which potentially could draw successes from external organizations was also very appealing.