Skills Management
There was a time, not so very long ago, when you could divide your staff into programmers and analysts, count heads, and pretty much be done with skill planning.

Today, however, every shop needs a diverse array for specialized experience. And since it takes months to master each of today's specialities, you need to be proactive in understanding the skills you have and the demand for the ones which may be in short supply.

Skills Management is the Keystone of Resource Planning
Project Observatory works with you to provide a basis for both short and longer term resource skills management.

  • It allows your administrator to maintain a master list of skill and competency codes in a hierarchical format.
  • It keeps track of the skills you are now using.
  • It maintains an inventory of the skills of your staff and their professional interests.
  • It provides a Search Facilility to find the best people for new assignments.
  • It helps you understand the imbalances that may exist in the supply and demand of skilled labor.




    • COLLECTING SKILL INFORMATION

    Project Interviews The Observatory initiates interviews with project managers.
    Using system generated questionaires, the project leaders indentify the skill code that best characterizes the work of each individual on their project.
    Capabilities Interviews The Observatory initiates interviews with all members periodically. These questionaires allow each person to identify the capabilities that they have and those which they are seeking the opportunity to acquire.

    SEARCHING FOR SKILLED RESOURCES

    Project Observatory's Search Facility uses availability, capabilities, and location data to find candidates that best meet your requirements. Click HERE for more information on the Search facility.



    VISUALIZING SKILL DEMAND


    Here are a few of the ways in which Project Observatory can visualize the usage of skills.

    Demand for Technical Writing
    Distribution of Technical Writing by Project

    Distribution of Technical Writing by Organization
    Distribution of Skills by Program


    USING SKILL ANALYSIS


    Skill analysis is the process of evaluating the supply and demand for skills within an organizational unit. The demand for skills consists of commitments and reservations. The supply of a skill is complicated by the fact that people almost always have multiple skills. As a result, your 12 person team may have the capability to do 11 persons work of analysis and 9 persons work of Notes programming and 3 persons work of Oracle programming and 5 persons work of technical writing. BUT NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

    Initiating Skill Analysis
    Skill analysis is normally initiated from the Capabilities section of an organization report document or as a part of a standard organization briefing.



    Interpreting the Skill Analysis Report


    The height of each bar is determined by the number of people who have that capability. Each person is represented by a "head" icon. When there are more than 20 people, multiple icons will appear side by side. Each skill bar is independently scaled so as to better display the skills for which fewer people are qualified.

    AVAILABLE CAPACITY(Green): All persons who have a recorded capability for the skill will be counted. This controls the height of the skill bar. Each member appears as an individual "head and shoulders" icon. The unused portion of this capacity is colored green.

    CURRENT USAGE(Yellow): All of the commitments and reservations that impact the specified time period and which have this skill will be summed to generate an aggregate demand (which is expressed in FTE). This portion of the bar is colored yellow to the extent that if fits within the capacity, or bright red to the extent that it exceeds it.

    OTHER DEMAND(Blue): This shows the utilization of the resource who have the desired capability on work using other skills. If you have 11 Analysts, but 8 are currently committed to projects doing Notes Programming, then you really only have 3 analysts.

    EXCESS DEMAND: caused by other commitments (Magenta) Excess demand caused by commitments to this skill (Red) Both of these represent problems, but they have usually have different solutions.

    For more information
    Read about Skill Analysis in the System Guide Adobe Acrobat Format
    Read about Interviews in the System Guide Adobe Acrobat Format