Skills Fingerprints

Skills fingerprints is a valuable technique that empowers individuals and teams to assess their current skill capabilities and anticipate future demand needs. This facilitates more effective skill development planning and enables informed decisions regarding technology and approaches to be used.

The process involves gathering information about each team member's proficiency and passion levels across a diverse set of skills. This information combines into what we call a "skills fingerprint" for each person.

These skills encompass both publicly available industry expertise and those that are unique to the company or team's domain.

By aggregating all individual skills fingerprints, we create a comprehensive "team skills fingerprint." By comparing this team skills fingerprint to the "skills demand fingerprint," we can readily identify any skill gaps and pinpoint opportunities for skill development within the team.

This technique offers a holistic view of the team's current skill set and provides a strategic roadmap for skill enhancement, ensuring teams are well-equipped to meet present and future challenges effectively.

Resources

The topic of Skills Fingerprints is covered in the High Performance Agility for Managers class.