Team Competency Matrix

In recent years, I have been working with different groups of people and I have always been concerned about having an engaged team. I believe that we should look at people and motivate them. taking care of each one differently, creating a relationship and a comfortable environment so that they can trust their own work and those around them.

And the competence matrix allows us to get to know people better, especially their knowledge in certain technical skills. To be more precise, it is possible to map the points that are not strong through a list. At this stage, I usually create a list with some subjects after talking to the team members.

Therefore, when identifying topics, we classified them into 3 categories of knowledge:

1) Represented by the color green: if you turn around, you have a high knowledge on the subject;

2) Represented by the color yellow: he knows well, has a good knowledge of the subject;

3) Represented by the color red: learner, does not feel comfortable about the topic;

From this point, I put the names of the people - I hid these names in the image to avoid exposure - and each one fills the worksheet according to their knowledge with the colors that correspond to the categories mentioned above. The material presented was prepared in an electronic spreadsheet.

At the end of this stage, we calculate the total and map the strengths and weaknesses of the teams in the selected technical subjects. Our list includes up to 10 subjects, which I believe is a good number, in order to reach the objective of disseminating knowledge among all. I mean, we mapped the technical topics that are not considered strong among people within the scope of the project, so that we can efficiently target our deliverables.

The use of this practice arose in order to outline an efficient plan for distributing activities, and mainly because we observed in previous teams that some people did not feel comfortable demonstrating the lack of necessary knowledge regarding the topic and, as a result, avoided interactions between them and the team.

Therefore, the purpose of this practice, in addition to making it possible to map the strengths of team members, can also motivate them to expand their knowledge in areas in which they do not have as much expertise.

I learned from this approach that people created a nice motivation to study on the selected subject, showing a feeling of belonging and not exclusion within the team. And the interaction between everyone during the presentations came naturally with a very productive chat within the meetups.

That is, with this dynamic, we do not need to exclude those who do not have knowledge about a certain subject and overload those who do. At first, we could put this planning into practice to get to know each one and make the distribution of activities more efficient, but at the same time I learned that the meetups technically raised people and team engagement, as knowledge was disseminated, and we left everyone more motivated, because they saw that their potential was recognized.

I will close the text with the image below, where skills involve 3 important pillars:

1) Knowledge - everything you have studied during your life will allow you to create a solid base of knowledge;

2) Skill - using your knowledge base, you will be able to put into practice what you know about the topic;

3) Attitude - pillar that shows your initiative to innovate, solve a problem, using your acquired skills and knowledge.

Thus, when using the competency matrix, we can encourage people to raise their competencies, going through the aforementioned pillars, and not just as a tool for process improvement.