- Creation of Skills (new customfields)
- Configure customfield to specify steps and optional labels
- Creation of Profiles and related set of skills
- Per user: input of own skills and proficiencies
- Compare own skills and proficiencies with defined profiles or use "best match", automatically
- for Human Resources (HR):
- Answering a questionary/test to determine user's personality type indicators
- Using the report "HR: Profiles Report incl. Skills-Radar and best matching users" for peer group analysis
(pre-requisite: user must be member of Jira group "HR-Administrators", which is created by the add-on automatically)
This can be used for personell development as well as verify job position/title over time: compare current career level with proposed profile (best match)
- for Project Management:
- Create issues and specify necessary minimum requirements with respect to skills
- Assign by skills (and personality)
This can be used to optimize assignment of issues to team members
- for Resource Management:
- Creation of a new custom field of type "profile" to just display skills belonging to selected profile and show on a skills-radar on an issue
(you have to put all necessary custom fields of type "skill" on the edit/view screen as well)
Using an issue for each candidate, this can be used to verify the (e.g. external) candidate's matching level with a required profile
- Creation of a new custom field of type "profile" to just display skills belonging to selected profile and show on a skills-radar on an issue
...
- Determine your requirements with respect to a usable list/taxonomy of skills
option 1: create a new custom field of type "Skill" per specified skill as Jira administrator and assign suitable screens
Since version 1.4, please click on "configure" to modify the new created customfield of type "skill":
- specify the acceptable steps of the skill, like 4 steps (0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%) instead of linear steps between 0% and 100%
- also, you can specify labels per step, which will be displayed above the skill slider for better understanding/usability.
Additionally, you can link content to this skill: any issue by key or an URL like a Confluence page for documentation of this skill on a meta-level including commenting, voting etc. The skill name will get a link-icon and is clickable on the screen.
- Determine a set of suitable profiles each having a set of skills including their minimum characteristics
option 2: create a suitable set of profiles. Each profile consists of a set of skills, already existing and re-used or new additional skills (alternative to the creation of skill-custom fields (see above), you can do that as part of creation of profiles)
- Each user has got the option to fill out her/his own current skill characteristic within their user profile (skills & profiles)
On your personal page of "Skills & Proficiencies", each user can maintain her/his skills and level of proficiency as percentage on tab "my Skills":
On next tab "my Profiles", each user may compare own skill set with defined reference profiles or select option "automatic determining best fitting profile" for automatic matching:
Resulting e.g. in a skills-radar like the following one after commit via "apply" button at the bottom of the page:
Finally: on tab "my Personality Type", each user can excercize a personality test by answering a couple of questions (just click on answer A or B, which fits as best for the user)
Based on that questionary, one of sixteen different personality types will be determined matching as best: the radar axis' display all eight psychology measurements and a larger textual interpretation help to understand better. For all personality types, that interpretation is structured as follows:
a) Portrait of the personality type
b) Jungian functional preference ordering
c) Relationships
d) Strengths
e) Weaknesses
f) What does Success mean to that personality
g) Potential Problem Areas
h) Explanation of Problems
i) Solutions
j) Living Happily in our World as an xyz
k) Specific suggestions
l) Ten Rules to Live By to Achieve Success
- Specify the necessary skills and their minimum characteristics per issue
If the necessary skills are not displayed for your issue, please ask your jira-administrator to assign the existing skills to the related edit-screen and/or create the missing skills (see topic #1, above)
- Assign by skill: automatically get proposals of best matching users based on the required skills and maintained/available user skills
Click on the link "assign by skill" to get a sorted list of all assignable users. A "best match" algorithm is used for sorting with regard to the minimum required skills and proficiencies. The top 5 of this list are visualized graphically on the skill radar by default. By un/selecting the checkbox in front of each user you can adjust this: the skills radar will update automatically. In addition to the degree of coverage of the skills and their aggregated total number, the personality type is also displayed if this was previously determined by the related user by testing. Having the same skills, this serves to make a decision between different users with regard to their typical personality/character. With optimized staffing, the resulting team performance is significantly better and usually leads to fewer frictional losses.
Optionally, you can also search for employees: click into the input text field and simply enter acombination of characters or a more complex regular expression (for example if the correct spelling of a name is unknown). Not only the displayed names are searched but also the email addresses for better finding. By clicking on a team member/user within the lists on the left or directly on the polygon of skills on the right, that user is selected and automatically assigned to that issue if you commit via the "Assign" button on the bottom.
What does column "coverage" mean?
Per axis on the radar diagram, the minimum requirement with regard to skill and level of proficiency (in percent) is compared the the user's one. If the user's skill has got a higher level of proficiency than necessary, than it only counts as 100% else a calculated percentage. Graphically, all together represent the intersection of both polygons of the diagram.
What does column "netted" mean?
If one skill has got a higher level than required, it counts as mathematically calculated, e.g. 120%. Therefore, within the total aggregation, there are netting effects like skill A (120%) and skill B (80%) would result in the total of 100%. That just gives you an idea, if someone is over- or under-skilled for a certain issue, but you have to take a more differentiating look: very good Java Knowledge (technical skill) may not necessary net missing leadership (social skill) depending on the requested profile/skill set! - If you open an issue having a customfield of type "profile" on your screen, you can easily select a specific profile and all skills will be hidden but these being assigned to the selected profile. Automatically, a related skill-radar will display all profile's skills and their desired characteristics as well as the issue's skill values for easy comparison:
Select a profile interactively on screen:
Commit your choice by clicking on the OKAY button:
On the following result screen, you see all skills, but they are displayed one after another vertically and shift the "real" content to the bottom. On the other hand, skills display their percentage value only, which do not need much space horizontally, causing a lot of unused space:
That will be avoided by a 2-column layout for the customfields like for native Jira fields on the top of an issue page: much better for user acceptance!
If you enable the checkbox "all skills", you can display all skills being put on that screen independent from the selected profile.
Each skill is configured as a new custom field of type "skill": you can add a new skill on the profile configuration page or alternatively by creating a related new custom field, manually.
Having created a new skill, you can switch into the custom fields (Jira administration) and configure it to define the steps you need if 100 steps = percent does not match your requirements: just click on "Edit Steps" as shown below.
I recommend using sufficient labels for better user acceptance.
Important to know: if you add such modified custom field / skill to a profile, the steps are not usable immediately: first, you have to add that skill (and optional others) to the project, then save the profile, reload the page (hit F5) and click on edit profile. Now, you can use the steps for setting the reference value.