Brainstorming Different Approaches to Establishing a Single Source of Truth for Team Member Skills

What is the Problem we are trying to solve?

Currently, we do not have an efficient method for tracking team member skill sets across GitLab. Having this ability will improve Collaboration, Results, and Efficiency. Here are a few benefits of having a Single Source of Truth for identifying skill sets across Development:

1. As ad-hoc requests for tasks arise, we can better and more quickly align team members' skills to the request. This efficiency will lead to quicker onboarding and improved productivity for new initiatives
2. In the past we have used LinkedIn to determine team members' skill sets and often times the LinkedIn profiles are outdated and don't properly reflect the team member's expertise
3. Easier to plan projects by determining quickly whether or not we have the appropriate skill sets in the organization to complete a task
4. Team members are better able to find peers to share and exchange knowledge who share similar domains of expertise
5. Ability to more quickly identify the best team members to lead tech interviews or language-specific initiatives
6. Highlights areas in the organization or individual teams that have lower than acceptable technical skill set coverage
7. Highlights areas that might be Single Points of Failure due to the small amount of knowledge in the organization
8. Provides a clear picture of opportunities of improvement and growth for engineers who are looking for growing their skills

Background

There are some must-haves and nice to haves for this solution. If you are reviewing this issue and there are additional items you would like to add to either the Nice to Have or Must Have list please add them here in the description:

Must Have

• Ability for team members to update the skills
• Ability for all team members to view the skills across the organization

Nice To Have

• Ability to transparently identify the level of expertise (e.g: Java (beginner), Java (experienced) , Java (Expert)

To Do

1. Ideate on different approaches to developing a SSOT to view and manage GitLab Team Member Skills