SFIA guiding principles
The guiding principles of SFIA and how to use it
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Learn more about what SFIA is, its design principles, who uses it and why they use it.
User forum section of website now open
The User forum section is now available on the website. This is being developed to support our strategic aim of facilitating effective use and consumption of SFIA via an engaged community and supporting ecosystem. The forum covers a wide range of topics, including:
- Powerpoint slides providing an introduction to SFIA concepts, principles and terminology
- Generic mappings of SFIA 8 skills to recognised role families or career families.
- SFIA User stories - a collection of real-world experiences of organisations using SFIA
- SFIA skills-based job analysis - how to align SFIA skills and skill levels to jobs/roles.
- Job architecture - the purpose, components and benefits of a job/role architecture
- Behavioural frameworks. General concepts and SFIA's behavioural factors with some use cases.
- SFIA assessment - using SFIA to determine the skills or competency of an individual.
- Learning and development catalogues - general description and guidelines for mapping training courses and certifications to SFIA skills and levels
- Description of the 70 20 10 model and suggestions for how to use the model to support employee development.
About SFIA
SFIA has become the globally accepted common language for the skills and competencies for the digital world. Within its scope are many of the world's most in-demand occupations, encompassing professionals working in areas such as (but not limited to):
- information and communications technology
- business change
- digital transformation
- data science and analytics
- software engineering
- information and cyber security
- learning and education
- user centred design
- digital product development, sales and marketing
- human resource and workforce management
- applied computing and computational science
Resources from the SFIA Foundation
SFIA and skills management
SFIA provides a common language throughout the skills management cycle. This improves communication and understanding for all involved e.g. line management, HR and employees. By using SFIA, organisations can achieve a consistent and integrated skills and people management approach.
How SFIA works
At the core of SFIA is a comprehensive set of descriptions of professional skills and generic attributes. This section describes how it all fits together to form a simple, yet powerful, and proven approach.
The context for SFIA
SFIA is industry and business-led and at its core is the need for experience. SFIA's model for professional capability is holistic and includes experience, professional skills, knowledge, behaviours, qualifications and certifications.
The SFIA user community has requested guidance and recommendations from the SFIA Foundation to help drive good practice and consistency of outcome, despite different approaches. The SFIA Foundation approach is to capture good practice from the community, make it generic, provide a structure for understanding, and to publish it for the benefit of all.