Draft:Skills Framework for the Information Age
 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (December 2023) |
The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA, pronounced Sofia) is a global skills and competency framework for the digital world. SFIA was first published in 2000, created by a consortium of many organizations, spearheaded by the British Computer Society (BCS). Since its first publication, SFIA has been regularly refreshed and updated every 3 years to reflect the evolving needs of international industry and business.
The current published version of the SFIA Framework is version 8. SFIA 8 was published in September 2021 and is available from the SFIA Foundation website www.sfia-online.org.
The SFIA Framework[edit]
The SFIA Framework is an enabler for people who manage resources for ICT, Software Engineering and Digital Transformation and is independent of technology, method or approach. It is a common reference model, a common language, comprising 7 Levels of Responsibility with 102 Professional Skills or competencies. The Levels of Responsibility are key as they reflect the reality in industry where skills are practiced at different levels of responsibility.
SFIA is an experience framework - you have a skill or competence at a level of responsibility because you have practiced the skill or competence at that level in a real-world situation.
SFIA's seven Levels of Responsibility are characterised in terms of Generic Attributes (of Autonomy, Influence, Complexity, Knowledge and Business Skills). From a Professional Services perspective, responsibility levels 2-6 can be thought of anecdotally as: Associate professional, Professional, Senior professional, Principal professional, and Lead professional.[1]
Each of the 121 Professional Skills or competencies comprises a skill description and a description of the skill practiced at one or more of the 7 Levels of Responsibility.
To aid navigation within the framework the skills and competencies are organised into 6 categories: Strategy and Architecture; Change and Transformation; Development and Implementation; Delivery and Operation; People and Skills; and Relationships and Engagement.
More recently, to help address particular environments different views of SFIA have been developed to organise the skills and competencies into the alternative SFIA Views; these include a Software Engineering View, a Digital Transformation View, a DevOps View, a Big Data and Data Science View. Other SFIA Views are in development including a Cyber Security View.
Professional Skills[edit]
The competencies are grouped into categories and sub-categories. The categories are:
- Strategy and architecture
- Change and transformation
- Development and implementation
- Delivery and operation
- Skills and quality
- Relationships and engagement
Benefits of SFIA[edit]
SFIA alone does not deliver any business benefits; however, it does create a foundation to leverage and create additional value to the organization. Benefits of SFIA can include:[2]
- Enable ICT and the broader Business to work toward similar goals
- Can provide a clear understanding of standardized, leveled ICT skills across the organization
- Enable targeted training, to address specific skill gaps
- Improve ICT recruitment
- Assist with Performance Development of existing staff
References[edit]
External links[edit]