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Submitted by ndc on
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Has MT ever covered developing a career ladder for your team / org? I tried searching the list of all podcasts but didn't find anything directly related. Maybe it is covered in some other topics?

ses's picture
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I haven't seen any MT content on this yet, but I'm in the middle of this very process, along with two of my peer managers.  I'd be happy to compare notes some time.

ndc's picture
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That would be great! Looking forward to compare notes.

I'll start. I needed a base / principle to construct the career path. After some consideration these are the two principles that I use:

1. The career ladder should align with the team / organizaton's goals.

2. Higher position should have bigger contribution to the team / org.

In order to move forward with number 1, I listed down all activities within the team that need to be done to achieve the team's goal. Then I categorized each item into one of six levels of competence (my organization's format).

I have finished this exercise but not satisfied with the result. People reading it may get the sense that they have to master each item in order to move up. I don't want people to get this idea. Each item should be done by someone in the team but it doesn't have to be the same person.

Another issue is that each item / activity has its own level of complexity. My team is a software development team. One item in my list is "use version control". A junior developer may be able to do the basics of version control like pull and push. A senior developer may have to resolve merge conflict or devise a branching strategy that will be used by the whole team.

These details can be explained in the career ladder description but it will become uncomfortably long.

So, it still needs improvements :)

barbarastl's picture

One way is to look at who you have now and build a ladder from that - who do you consider junior, intermediate, senior, and look at those piles. What do the senior people do that differentiate themselves from the intermediate? Why is someone an intermediate, and not a junior - what additional skills do they have?