T-shaped Skills

We won’t repeat but enough has been said about T-shaped skills as well as their `π` and `m` shaped extensions.

Sticking with the `T` shape, each individual or institution’s collective competencies constitute their T-shape with unique breadth and depth offerings. Take database vendor DataBricks and SnowFlake for example:

  • The two are roughly equal in their specialty: database.
  • Databricks has pretty deep offering in its breadth business: machine learning platform.
  • Snowflake has a shallow offering in its breadth business: Pythonian web app framework

Slash Professionals

The other way to indicate those professionals with multi-disciplinary domain knowledge and skills is Slash Professionals.

RACI Framework

In multi-team collaboration projects where efforts among many stake-holders needs to be orchestrated, clearly designating:

  • Who is responsible (doing the work)
  • Who is accountable (owning, quality control and signing off the work)
  • Who needs to be consulted (inbound upstream dependency), and
  • Who needs to be informed (outbound downstream dependency)

has been proven to be a crucial factor to project success. So crucial that it got its own four-letter abbreviation: RACI Framework.

T-shaped RACI impact model

Arranging RACI into a T-shape can explain and remedy many common corporation ills.

In above arrangement:

  • The vertical stroke of the T represents a team or individual’s core impacts, the stuff the individual or team is responsible to build and held accountable for its quality.
  • The horizontal stroke of the T represents a team or individual’s general impacts, the consultative service or knowledge the individual or team may provide or inform

Scope Creep

When a team is chartered to build A yet it spends its cycles building Z, the team commits the crime of scope creep.

The motivations for scope creep may vary:

  • Z is hyped
  • Z enjoys more visibility among higher managment
  • Z is the team leader’s personal interest
  • …

But the harms of scope creep are the same:

  • Roadmap Deviation. Team capacity is a fixed-sum game. The more efforts diverted to Z, the less efforts spent on A.
  • Duplication. If Z is hyped, many teams scope creep to build Z, resulting in many copies of Z.
  • Politics. Our Z is better than your Z. Your team is not competent enough to build Z… Political fights abound…
  • …

Wild Goose Chase

Same reasoning applies to individual contributors (IC). When an IC is tasked to do A yet she spent her energy on X, Y, and Z. She commits the crime of wild goose chase.

I-shaped Performance Review

How to arrest the rampant scope creep and wild goose chase in corporations? I propose the somehow counter-intuitive I-shaped Performance Review:

  • Performance of an individual or team (via the team leader) is solely based on the vertical “Responsibility” and “Accountability” assigned.
  • Horizontal contributions outside of the vertical `I` don’t count
  • This way individuals and teams are forced to prioritize what they need to do, not what they want to do.

T-shaped Impacts