TTC Global Supports local GOVIS and IT Professionals NZ Event

TTC New Zealand was proud to support GOVIS (the NZ Government IS Forum) and IT Professionals NZ (the professional body of the IT industry in NZ) in hosting a presentation on “Navigating you career with SFIA”, given by Vic MacLennan, CEO of IT Professionals, and Professor Elizabeth Valentine, an expert of Transformation Leadership and Governance. This presentation was held at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) in Wellington.

Vic gave a brief overview of what SFIA is. In summary, it’s a framework giving individuals and organisations a common language to define skills and expertise in a consistent way, and it describes the professional skills at various levels of responsibility. Vic also discussed the latest refresh of the SFIA skills framework to v9 – to include role and skills definitions for CyberSecurity, AI, Data and Records Management, Digital Services, FinOps, CX to name a few.

Prof Elizabeth Valentine talked about the importance of organisations to regularly assess their skills capability especially as organisations look to transform to digital delivery, to ensure that not only that they have the appropriate skills and capabilities to do the work required, but from also a strategic governance perspective that those providing the oversight and general direction also have the appropriate experience and capability to perform their roles effectively. You can watch the session on GOVIS's YouTube Channel!

As an IT professional, what I like about the SFIA framework is the clarity it provides in terms of defining the scope and experience assisting in developing my career in a specific technical area. Many organisations have different titles and perhaps overlapping but different role definitions for a role such as a “Senior Test Analyst”, what SFIA enables is a common understanding and definition of what’s expected for a particular role at a required level of expertise and in a defined technical domain. As someone starting out their career in IT, they can use the SFIA skills framework to discuss with their manager steps they need to take to lift themselves to the next level in the skills framework, be that specific technical development or opportunities for more responsibility.

For an organisation like TTC Global, it also helps with recruitment, candidate selection and candidate proposals to potential clients. If the client uses the SFIA framework for their role definitions, then it becomes very clear of what they need and expect when they approach TTC with a request for a Test Manager with a role definition that aligns with Testing: Level 5 in the SFIA skills framework. The clarity that using the SFIA framework reducing confusion and guesswork for account managers, clients and candidates. Also, for when TTC is asked to conduct Test Capability and Maturity Assessments for clients, having a framework like SFIA is a valuable input into our assessment process.

SFIA v9 is due for release Q4 24/Q1 25.

You can find out more about below:

• SFIA: https://sfia-online.org/en
• GOVIS: https://www.govis.org.nz/
• ITP: https://itp.nz/
• Prof Elizabeth Valentine (VUW): Dr Elizabeth Valentine | School of Information Management | Victoria University of Wellington
• MBIE: https://www.mbie.govt.nz/