Team Competency Matrix

The Team Competency Matrix is ​​a very simple tool to determine the skill set of the team in relation to a specific need. We can use this matrix in order to see if all the skills required for a project are present or in the evolution of the skills of the teams.

Team Competency Matrix: skill sharing

It is essential in the teams that all members share skills with other members of the team. It’s often very dangerous to have only one member of the team on a specific skill.

Imagine that a member of your team has an accident; we realize that he is the only one with the skills required for a project. Indeed, it would be a real disaster for the company.

Team Competency Matrix: Required Skills

We begin by determining the skills needed for the project and the expectations for each of these skills. Here is a depiction bellow:

Here is the legend associated with the color points of the team competency matrix:

• green: mastery of the skill
• yellow: junior knowledge of the skill
• red: no knowledge of the skill

If we follow the need for sharing skills, it would be mandatory to have at least two circles in each of the cells in the “expectation” column like this:

However, it is essential to have the finances to impose this rule or prepare a rise in competence of the teams.

We will now complete this skill matrix with the team members themselves to see if we have the skills required for the project:

No luck, on the two skills surrounded in red, our team doesn’t have the necessary competences of the project. However we can see two very different cases.

ReactJs is well mastered by one of the members of the team. So, one could set up an internal training plan for the team. Let Eric train Edouard on this key skill.

For RabbitMQ, it would probably be necessary to start a recruitment because in spite of training a member of the team, it will not master this technology before some time.

Conclusion Team Competency Matrix

This matrix of skills is very easy to set up because it is very simple and concrete. It’s useless to make something complex when a matrix allows to have a global vision of the skills of the team.

Do you use the team competency matrix before starting a project?