INTRODUCTION
This chapter looks at some of the many competency frameworks that exist in the real world. A small sample of these frameworks will be chosen and investigated in more detail. The main aim behind this exercise is to show the different structures of the frameworks and to discuss how each one achieves its stated objectives. There are two broad categories of frameworks that will be considered here, which are:
Public-domain frameworks. These public domain frameworks are typically geared towards a specific industry or profession and are often managed and controlled by professional bodies or industry groups. Indeed, as will be discussed later in this book, one of the main uses for competency frameworks and competency assessment is for continued professional development, so it is natural that the professional bodies take a leading role in such matters.
Private or in-house frameworks. These are typically geared specifically towards a particular organisation or company and are usually proprietary. As they are owned by their relevant organisations, these tend not to be available for the general public and tend to be used exclusively for in-house activities, such as staff appraisals, tendering, and so on.
For the purposes of this chapter, the focus will be solely on the public-domain frameworks and will not cover private frameworks at all. Having said that, the same concepts that are identified and discussed for public frameworks are equally applicable to private frameworks.
The sample of frameworks has been chosen to provide a wide spread of interest across a number of disciplines and, in particular, will include:
UKSPEC, the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence. The UKSPEC is the cornerstone of all technical competences in the UK. The UKSPEC is used as the basis for professional accreditation, such as Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Chartered IT Professional (CITP), and all UK professional bodies use it as part of their professional assessment. The UKSPEC is owned and managed by the Engineering Council (see UKSPEC for more details);
SFIA. The acronymically challenged framework known as SFIA (pronounced ‘Sophia’) is a framework that is geared towards the skills required for the effective implementation and use of Information Systems (ISs) making use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The SFIA framework maps directly back to the UKSPEC and is owned and managed by the SFIA Foundation (see SFIA for more details);
INCOSE, the International Council on Systems Engineering competencies framework, is an international body that is committed to furthering the discipline of systems engineering. They have produced a competency framework that maps back to the UKSPEC and covers various cross-cutting concepts associated with systems engineering. Please note that the term ‘systems engineering’ is the engineering definition of the term, rather than the IT definition of the term. The INCOSE framework is owned and managed by INCOSE (see INCOSE for more details);
APM, the Association for Project Management Body of Knowledge. The APM framework forms the heart of the APM assessment and accreditation and is aimed specifically at the discipline of project management for all industries. The APM Body of Knowledge is owned and managed by the APM (see APM for more details);
APMP, the Association of Proposal Management Professionals framework. The APMP (not to be confused with APM) framework is aimed specifically at proposal and bid management within an organisation and identifies a number of skills required for such activities. The APMP framework is owned and managed by the APMP (see APMP for more details).
These particular frameworks were chosen as they represent a broad spread of interest and will hopefully provide, at a minimum, one that is directly related to most readers’ professions. The idea here is to show that the techniques introduced and discussed in this book can be used for any framework and are not just limited to technical skills, but can be applied across the wider business.
In order to understand each framework and to get it into a format that can be compared and contrasted, each of the frameworks has been modelled in order to identify areas of complexity, aid understanding and help to communicate the different key concepts. The approach taken was the ‘seven views’ approach (Holt 2009) and uses the UML as its modelling notation. It should be stressed, however, before the readers of this book collectively snap it shut in disgust, that this is not a modelling book and it is not intended to provide a treatise on the pros and cons of modelling and its various notations. Please be assured that the modelling utilised in this book is used purely as a tool and will be kept to an absolute minimum.
The main use of the modelling in this chapter is to provide a brief, high-level ontology for each of the frameworks, so that the concepts may be compared and contrasted. These ontologies will also be used as a basis for abstracting a common ontology in the next chapter. Each ontology simply identifies the main concepts and terminology that is used in each framework and relates them together in the form of diagrams.