As Test Managers and Programme Test Managers, one thing we’ll get asked at some point is to assess the skills and competencies of the test team. To do that we need to understand what the skills and competencies we expect individual team members to posses actually are and how we’re going to assess them once identified. We also need to decide what we’re going to do with the information we gather.
Skills and competencies come in many shapes and forms. They draw on hard learning from the team member’s academic study of the testing domain up to raw experience gained over many years and through the projects delivered. As such we need to agree how to group them, then break them down into a well thought out Skills Matrix.
In the Skills Matrix template on this site, I have added the following examples:
- Technical – Tools and Technology used to carry out testing activities
- Testing – Analysis & Planning, Execution & Reporting that are the basis for testing activities
- Application – Your application of system under test and what areas of the system are well understood
Clearly you could break these areas down in many ways and make them more contextually relevant to how your organisation sees skills sets, but these are a good start. Under each category I have entered specific examples such as;
- Tools: ALM, UFT, Jira, Toad, PuTTY
Technology is more general and could include scripting languages, protocols or maybe servers and operating systems. As with all templates, it provides a guide but it’s up to you to interpret and apply it to your unique testing or management problem.
Enumeration
In order for the team to be ranked (or rank themselves), we need to understand what those ranks are and what ‘value’ we’re assigning. On the About tab of the template, you’ll see this has been defined as:
| Rank | Level | Definition |
| 1 | No knowledge | No practical, working knowledge, should be able to use if provided clear guidance |
| 2 | Awareness | Can work with existing solutions and practices, understand what to do but perhaps not fully why |
| 3 | Proficiency | Can maintain and provide minor improvements, notable skill in some areas |
| 4 | Competency | Full understanding of existing solutions and practices required for day to day work |
| 5 | Expertise | Able to critically assess and improve on current use and build future capability |
Clear definitions are essential, but in no way perfect. Use these as a guide but encourage the team not to labour too much over them.
Professional Development & Planning
When rolling out the Skills Matrix and asking the team to rank themselves, the first question will be ‘Why?’ It isn’t unreasonable that you’ll spook the team into wondering what it might mean to rank low on the items you want to assess. You wouldn’t be getting them to complete it if it wasn’t relevant. As people and skills change you would do well to introduce a strong process of assessment > review > development of the team, before you roll out the Skills Matrix as a management and planning tool.
Be sure to reassure them, that this is to help identify the skill base of the team, to make assignment of testing tasks more effective, and to identify ways in which the team members can be trained and so increase the team’s capability.
Capability is the key. The Matrix should only ever be used to ensure your planning as a Programme Test Manager is more effective – who is available, when, with what skills, to keep planned activities moving ahead? If Claire is off for a week and she’s the only person who knows the API testing that’s a planning issue for you to resolve with the Test Manager, that’s not a Claire problem. When Dan is out on training but is the one who runs the CI / CD pipeline so integrations may stop, that’s also not a Dan problem. Your job as the Programme Test Manager is to work with your Test Managers to know this in advance and do something about it – a Skills Matrix is a great start.
Mark
The Skills Matrix is in the Templates section of the website or open it directly.
