Intranet and digital workplace skills matrix
About the Spark Trajectory skills matrix
The skills matrix is open source and free to use! But if you want more help and structure we have developed a detailed methodology to map your team's skills.
Welcome to the Spark Trajectory skills matrix. We’ve created it to help define the skills and competencies covered by our industry and to help teams understand the skills they need to plan, operate and improve a successful digital workplace or intranet.
It provides details of competencies essential for intranet and digital workplace people and teams. It contains five domain areas, each with nine skills (that’s 45 in total).
Each skill is broken down into three levels of increasing competency:
Apprentice
Limited but increasing capabilities based on learning and on-the-job experience, but guidance and mentoring is required to fulfil potential.
Practitioner
Good professional capabilities sufficient for many circumstances and roles. Able to guide and mentor apprentices.
Master
Abilities that are the best in the professional field, gained from significant experience. Able to teach and guide others in their development.
How to use the Spark Trajectory skills matrix
Click on the individual skill above to reach the current web page version of each skill description and to view the three skill levels. Each skill has associated skills listed, as well as links to other resources and skills frameworks specific to each skill domain.
Intranet and digital workplace people can use this framework to:
Understand where their skills lie
Gauge how deep their skills are
Work out where they can invest their time in development
Plan their career
Seek or offer mentoring within skills or across domains
Help to articulate their skill set to others
Intranet and digital workplace teams can use this framework to:
Understand who has what skill
Map the skills of teams, project teams, or virtual teams
Plan new roles or develop existing ones
Plan training and development interventions
Identify gaps in expertise and practice
Facilitate conversations with vendors, HR and others
The skills matrix is open source and free to use in the way you want. But sometimes teams need a more structured approach or a little help to get the best out of the matrix. We have developed a detailed methodology to map your team's skills.
Available as both an on-site workshop and as a remote evaluation, our skills mapping service provides everyone involved with a personalised development report to help your entire team grow and focus on performing better, together.
How to contribute to this skills matrix
We have invested considerable time into what we think will prove to be a very useful asset. We’ve done our best from what we know, but we need your help to take this further. We will manage your feedback and suggestions and maintain the matrix on behalf of the industry.
Web page master, Google Doc draft
The current version of each skill is published as a web page available by clicking on the boxes in the matrix. At the top of the each skill page there is a link to a public Google Doc draft in "Suggested edits" mode.Only nine skills
If you can't draw it, it’s not beautiful. Each domain needs to stay at nine skills so embrace the constraint. If you think another one would be better, one must be removed or be merged with another then let us know by leaving a note.Three levels
Only three levels per skill are allowed: Apprentice, Practitioner and Master. Keep the descriptions short and snappy - nobody has time to read an essay. Unless it is essential, edit it out. Each skill should start with a present tense verb such as “Manages”; “Creates”; “Oversees”. If you need to you can put an adverb on the front: "Proactively manages".Explain why
Don't just call us idiots: stick a note in with a civil and reasoned explanation. In large swathes of this model we aren't masters ourselves, and possibly not even apprentices. We need your help to build a valuable resource for the intranet and digital workplace community.No "everyone" skills
People skills isn't on there. Neither is management skills, or presentation skills, or a myriad of things that EVERYONE needs to have in ANY role in ANY industry. Ignore the generic stuff and concentrate on what we need to specifically deliver to be successful in our strange little corner of modern work life.
License
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
What this means in practice:
If you are a vendor, consultant or otherwise sell some form of service related to intranets or digital workplaces
Please do use it to explain what organisations should be doing with skills - this is exactly what it is for! As you would with any reference just make sure you give us a credit. However…
Please don’t create or sell services using it. So for example using it to carry out a skills audit, selling a workshop based on it, saving days on creating job descriptions and then charging the full amount, printing t-shirts, mouse mats or novelty corn on the cob holders. This is a small world so we'll probably find out and there will probably be a scene. [Update 7 Nov 2018. Hoozin did, we found out, there was a scene.]
If you want to, please contact us and we can discuss terms.
We reserve the right to recoup our time that we spend in making it by selling services based on it (if basking in glory feels insufficient). One way to pay us back is to contribute your knowledge back into the project.
If you are a practitioner working within an organisation
Fill your boots - we made this for you. Whether there are 200 people or 200,000 people in your company use it, adapt it, turn it upside down, print posters or cushion covers - whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We are happy that you are finding it useful, just mention us when you do and speak kindly of us.