Growth up: how we assess skills in a team

Hello! I am Vanya Solovyov , design director of DocDoc (part of the Sberbank group). Today is the Dream-Tim heading , which tells how to create a dream team.

To develop our design team, we settled on two tools. And they complement each other.

The first tool: levels in design

We have implemented a transparent growth system that solves long-term problems:

• designer - "it is not clear how to get an increase in salary and where to further develop, what courses to go?" ;
• Company - "how to systematize the design development in the right direction?" .

Second tool: skill assessment

Helps to precisely develop hard and soft skills of each designer.

For a better understanding of the work of these two tools, imagine that:

• levels in design - this tool is similar to a guidebook that shows the whole range of directions and points of growth for a designer;
• an assessment of skills is similar to a dashboard by which you can look at indicators and understand whether a designer can grow in the right direction or not.

I talked about levels in design in one of the previous articles . Today I’ll tell you about the assessment of skills: why this tool is needed, how we implement it and what we do with the data obtained.

Introduction

The work of a designer is a combination of versatile skills. Some are well developed, others poorly. This is normal when we “pump over” skills depending on the scope of their application.

But introspection is difficult. Therefore, we collected professional skills and grouped them into sections:

• visual design - UI ;
• interface design - UX ;
• research and analytics;
• self and project management;
• design artifacts.

Link to the table

Thanks to Yura Vetrov for the basic concept of the idea, which we adopted and developed to fit our needs.

Assessment

We conduct an assessment once every six months and, so that it is reasonably objective, we dwell on this set of participants for each designer:

• 2-3 managers with whom he worked closely for the past six months;
• 1-2 designers who can give an objective assessment;
• supervisor;
• the designer himself.

So that everyone understands the terminology of skills equally, when you hover over them, a hint with a description appears.


Each skill has a short description.

Skills are evaluated using a five-point system:

• - · “I don’t know” ;
• 1 · bad, “knows nothing” ;
• 2 · superficial, “do not trust” ;
• 3 · average, “well, so-so” ;
• 4 · excellent, “you can trust” ;
• 5 · authoritative, "he can teach . "

After several evaluations, it was noticed that the guys often put fractional values ​​- that means the scale is small. In version 3.0, we will switch to a ten-point system.

Vote count

To get objective results, we divided the final grade into two:

• the result is the average value of the ratings of managers, designers and the head;
• my assessment is how the designer appreciated himself.

This helps the designer himself to see two pictures of the world - how his colleagues see him and how he positions himself. This works if more than two people rate it.

In a separate tab, each designer can see the results of colleagues and compare themselves with them.


At such moments, I dream of a team of 10-16 designers to compare them

conclusions

What skills require development - determined by two factors.

We improve the good, do not touch the bad

Focusing on problems alone is a dubious idea. 70% of attention and effort should be directed to the development of what the designer is already strong at, and the remaining 30% - to clean tails and patch holes in skills.

70% are spent on developing skills with four points and above, and 30% on skills with three points and above.

Product Interests

For example, in a month, product managers will actively conduct research on users. If the designer’s assessment of this skill is closer to four points, then it makes sense to focus on his development.

In the end, a document is created for each designer, where it is written, what skills are worth paying attention to and recommendations for their development. In the short run, books, articles, and people. In the long term - courses and mitaps.


Articles, books, courses or mitaps.

Everything is purely advisory in nature - no coercion. The purpose of a skill assessment is to show points for growth. And then the designer decides for himself - to develop or score.

Results after two evaluations

Feedback after the ratings was positive - the guys took recommendations and showed good results. There were those who did nothing, but they said that it was useful for them to look at their skills from the side.

We took into account the mistakes of the past and begin preparations for the third assessment of skills, which will be held in late August.

And how do your company approach the development of designers? I will listen to you with interest in the comments.

Table link