Tim McGovern and Shirley Picardi, Directors of I/T Competency Groups
During phase 2 of the transition to the new Information Technology environment at MIT, everyone in Information Systems, as well as I/T people who are working on ReEngineering projects, as well as I/T people who are working on new administrative computing projects, will become affiliated with a "Competency Group (CG)." This affiliation is in addition to one or more work assignments on "standing" or "project" teams.
A CG is a group of people with a common domain of expertise, discipline, and/or skills. A CG is NOT where work is done; rather, it supplies staff capabilities and expertise to work teams. It is sort of a "home room" for team members working in processes and projects. The emphasis in CG's is on training, development, and mentoring. The basic function of a Competency Group Leader (CGL) is to plan, direct, and lead CG's so that appropriately skilled human resources are available when needed to work in MIT's information technology processes and projects.
The CGL's will work with team leaders, I/T process directors, I/T practice directors, and individuals to arrange for assignments to teams. The CG leaders will
CGL's will also work closely with MIT's Human Resources Department in fulfilling their new responsibilities. The CG work will be guided by the Human Resource Principles adopted by the Reengineering Steering Committee in December, 1994.
It is the CGL's responsibility to help everyone in I/T to develop their own responsibilities to nurture their growth and development. They will provide support, mentoring, education, and feedback, will work with members on career planning, and maintain regular contact with them to keep informed about their progress. With information technology changing rapidly, I/T professionals must constantly update their skills and competencies to remain effective in their jobs. This new CG affiliation is essential in the reengineered MIT environment. Individuals must not shortchange their professional development and career dreams in the shuffle of team assignments.
So your CG will become very important to you and your future over time.
The remainder of this document is organized as follows:
One way to think about Competency Groups is to think about what specific enabling processes are associated with them. We have been working on defining the CG activity in this way, and invite your questions, suggestion and comments on any aspect of this section. At the outset, it's important to note that the CGL's will be responsible for institutionalizing and improving these processes. However, they will not do all of the work for them themselves. In many cases, the work to recruit, select, and appraise staff will be performed by many I/T staff in various capacities, such as team leaders.
At this time, we have identified the following processes associated with CGs:
Staffing & Recruitment
This process brings in new people as needed, including short-term contractors. The search for new people will sometimes be coordinated directly by one of the CGL's, and in some cases, by a project leader or others in the I/T organization. The CGL's will be responsible for maintaining a healthy channel into external sources of good people, so that we can fill open positions quickly, and with excellent people.
Skill Building
This process reinforces, and extends, people's skills in a couple of dimensions. MIT's I/T needs will surely change, and the I/T marketplace changes even more rapidly. People need to acquire, or extend, their technical competence in response to these changes. It is equally important that people acquire, and refine, the non-technical (sometimes called behavioral) skills, such as team skills, project management skills, and so forth.
Group Building, Mentoring & Sharing
This process provides a way for the people in a CG to interact on a personal level, day-in and day-out, both electronically, and face-to-face. It's very likely that the members of a CG will have project assignments that require them to spend most of their days in the "four corners" of the campus. The goal of this process is to provide ways to reduce, or to eliminate, the effect of this geographical dispersion, to in effect provide the CG "home room."
Team Formation
This process links individuals to assignments on the teams doing the work. A critical component of this process is the maintenance of a skills inventory for everyone in I/T. The goal of this process is to find the right people when a new team is being formed, or when an existing team needs to fill an open assignment. To do this, the CGL's will work with Practice and Process leaders, as well as with individuals and team leaders, to find the right match.
Performance Appraisal
This process provides feedback to individuals about their work from team leaders, team members, customers and others and helps individuals plan the further development of their skills. In addition to regular mechanisms for feedback about work on ongoing teams, it is especially important to ensure that appropriate feedback is communicated among team members & team leaders before project teams complete their work and disband.
Compensation, Salary & Wage Administration
This process provides for consistency, and equity, in the compensation of everyone in I/T.
Termination
This process manages the departures of people from positions the I/T organization, for whatever reasons. It is natural for people to come and to go. This process will ensure that when it's time for people to move on, that there is an orderly process to attend to the interests of everyone involved.
There are four Competency Groups in IS -- Systems, Assistance, Applications, and I/T Management. We are sure that these names will generate discussion and feedback because we have had a lot of our own! We settled on these names because they were first used by the "Trans-IT" team in November 1994. Here are some examples of the kinds of work that you might expect in each of these CG's:
For example:
For example:
For example:
Each of the CG's will be affiliated with one of the Competency Group Leaders (CGL's). In the long term, as all of MIT organizes into a competency-based structure, the I/T management Group will probably affiliate with others at MIT doing similar work.
We expect that team leaders will affiliate with the CG with the majority of their team members.
The Initial affiliations of staff to one of the 4 Competency Groups above will be done in the following manner:
On August 15, we have this document which introduces the concept of CG's.
Between August 21 and September 11, the CGL's will hold a series of open meetings to talk with staff about the groupings, and what will be required of each staff member.
From September 5 through September 15, everyone in I/T will be asked to indicate which of the Competency Groups they would like to affiliate with. This can be done on-line, by using a web-based form, or by sending an email message to the mailing list cg-leaders@mit.edu with the following information:
Regardless of which approach you use, your affiliation will be confirmed by the CGL's.
From September 18 through September 29, the CGL's will be handling any loose ends resulting from the "open affiliation" process.
At the start, Shirley Picardi will be responsible for the Assistance, and I/T Management CG's, and Tim McGovern will be responsible for the Systems, and Applications CG's.
We will establish an I/T Competency Group advisory team to help with some of the CG startup tasks, These might include a review of CG processes, the initial staff affiliations with CG's, as well as helping to look at, and re-designing, the hiring, appraising, training, and development processes.
We are inviting all interested IS staff to volunteer to be on this advisory team. We would like to put together a team that draws on a wide variety of I/T competencies. We are also interested in recruiting folks who are interested in the kinds of issues that the CG's will be working with. Your contribution might be as much as 8 hours/week, meeting time as well as task assignments, during Phase 2.
We will set up a database that will keep track of all the relevant information about staff, their team assignments, length of assignments, and so forth. We will most interested in keeping track of staff members' goals, their preferred team assignments, as well as their training needs. We might also try to use this database to address equity issues related to a fair distribution of "scut work" (we all recognize there is some work that must be done but is not work we all go out and beg for).
Whenever an individual works on a team, the assignment and associated performance evaluation will be tracked for future reference by the CGL's. This information will be used to help the individual achieve his/her career goals and to help MIT fully staff its projects and fully assign its people.
The Institute is implementing a process for conducting performance appraisals throughout all its offices, and IS is an active participant in this impmentation. Essential elements of the new MIT process are based on the IS process, which has evolved during the past eight years. As we move forward, we anticipate that the performance appraisal process will continue to evolve to fit more appropriately our team-based way of doing work.
During the early part of Phase 2, we will facilitate a mechanism for ITLT to review every open IS position and determine whether, when, and how to fill it, as part of its initial resource allocation.
At the same time, early part of Phase 2, the CG advisory group, working with the CGL's, will design and pilot a new hiring process, for use in ongoing hiring activities.
During the early part of Phase 2, everyone will be asked to prepare a skills inventory, including of a resume of his/her experience education and skills. In time, CG advisors will work with CGLs and others to devise and pilot methods for validating these self-assessments.
The CGL's will pick up the IS training and development initiative recently coordinated by M.I.S.T. (Managing Information Systems Training) to help prepare IS staff for success in the new framework. A project management competency evaluation and training program is being planned to address MIT's need to strengthen its I/T project management skill base. Once CG's are formed, CGLs will work with individuals, team leaders, and other members of ITLT to identify additional training needs and arrange ways to address them.