New version of SFIA launched

Here’s another acronym for you: SFIA.  It’s ‘Skills Framework for the Information Age’ and is owned and maintained by The SFIA Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation.

Essentially SFIA (say: Sophia) is a list of the skills required of people in IT and related jobs.  It’s been around over 20 years in various forms although project management was only added as skill in version 3.  SFIA has been through an overhaul recently: I was one of more than 80 reviewers so I went through the project management and the change implementation, planning and management skills with a fine tooth comb and sent off my comments, many of which, I’m pleased to say, have made it to the new version.

The good thing about SFIA is that it’s free, so if you are writing job descriptions or just want to see what people think project management is all about you can go to the SFIA Foundation site and look through the skills and tasks.  This way you can benchmark yourself, and you can also look at what you should be doing to move up to the next level.

For example, project management is a skill that kicks in at Level 4 (out of 7) so you can already see that it takes some intelligence and skill to get that far.  So, if you’re a project manager already, well done – you have skipped the first three levels without even trying.

At Level 4 you are expected to be able to:

• Define, document and safely execute small-scale projects, actively participating in all phases of the project.
• Identify, assess and manage risks to the success of the project.
• Estimate costs, timescales and resource requirements for the successful delivery of the project(s) to agreed terms of reference.
• Prepare and maintain realistic project and quality plans and track all activities against the plans, providing regular and accurate reports to senior management, and client/user management as appropriate.
• Monitor costs, timescales and resources used, and take action where these deviate from agreed tolerances.

And so on.  At this level one of the suggested training activities is project management methods and leadership skills, as preparation for more demanding project management responsibility.

At the other end of the scale, once you get to Level 7 you are expected to be able to:

• Manage one or more large project teams, developing and maintaining manpower plans for managers and staff involved and monitoring the deployment of individuals to ensure that they are contributing effectively whilst developing skills and experience.
• Take responsibility for the delivery of high-profile projects and programmes of work, typically with large budgets, establishing and maintaining the correct structures to control and monitor the deliverables to the business.
• Lead project planning, scheduling, controlling and reporting activities for strategic, high impact, high risk projects, ensuring that comprehensive project, quality, and risk plans are prepared and maintained.

And again the list goes on.  Once you reach Level 7 you should be pretty good at what you do and the knowledge areas related to this level include having an expert level in methods and techniques associated with planning and monitoring progress of projects like product/work breakdown structures, baselining, critical path analysis, earned value, resource analysis and conflict resolution.

A lot of the skills, knowledge areas, tasks and suggested training activities are not IT related – at least, not for project management and the other areas relating to business change in the framework.  So even if you don’t work in IT, you will find browsing through the SFIA useful, especially if you are putting together your plans to achieve all the PDU’s or continuing professional development activities you need for 2009!

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