What is SFIA?

 

What is SFIA? The SFIA stands for Skills Framework for the Information Age, this SFIA is an international regulatory framework for IT Skills Management, operated by a not-for-profit foundation. SFIA represents a complete set of 96 IT skills, ranging from Programmer to Help Desk Support, at up to 7 levels. The SFIA skills are generic and can be customized and combined to define roles and levels appropriate to an organization, just like a programmer role using specific technologies such as Java and JEE. What good about it is that the categories and level of the SGIA are standard? The categories that are required to follow is strategy and architecture, Business change, solution development, and implementation, service management, procurement and management support, and client interface. There are also levels required to follow for the SFIA skills. The levels follow, assist, apply, enable, ensure or advise, initiate and influence, and lastly is set the strategy, inspire, and mobilize. Most of the time, the proper training has to be taken by the person or has to take a course so they will have a proper orientation for the application of the framework. Knowing the different IT skills, roles, and responsibilities using the framework SFIA explains how this structure relates to the practicality of the IT skills and capability management organization. Of course, attending the said training or workshop, there will be guidance personnel who is a certified SFIA instructor.

Why do organizations need the framework for IT skills management? Most organizations go by the gut feel of handlers for managing their staff’s IT skills. If the plans are doing good and have no major issues, so probably the organization have the right staff skill mix. But time and over, some organizations really do not get it right. Project outcomes are often sub-optimal, it is like the group did not get the requirements or user engagement right. Those could be the reason why there were cost or time overruns, and so many more issues pop up during the project. Major user surveys by firms show that 20% to 30% of IT projects fail, with larger projects more likely to fail than smaller projects. IT skills are obviously important to project completion as simple and composite causes of failures include poor project management, inappropriate software platforms, poor testing, and improper release practices.

Once that the organization greed upon the needs of good management and development of the entire staff for the IT skills is the better decision of the directors.  But the question is, how are they going to have the good and better IT skills staff? Actually, it is not the staff that failed but with the proper organization, communication, and pleasant connection between the IT and managers, the ITs and the projects, and the ITs and the ITs' themselves. The framework for IT skills management is exactly the sfia framework EU is. The SFIA is one of the IT's best-kept secrets at all times as an IT organization and becomes aware of the framework is the answer for all the popped problems and issues. Undeniably speaking that it greatly assists and simplifies managing and developing IT skills in many ways. The quantitatively defining of the organizational IT roles are well maintained with the standardized SFIA IT skills categories and levels. The mapping or setting ranges of the staff job roles to the organizational IT roles are well defined. There will be a better quantitatively measuring of skill levels and skill gaps. With the SFIA, The development and defining of the plans to fill gaps like mentoring, training, and hiring are well assisted.