SFIA skills framework, a communication bridge between Higher Education, Companies, and IT Professionals

Abstract

Identify competences of the professionals framing their strengths and weaknesses in order to address what skills improve or learn, and cover the needs of the business sector, represents the needs for the business sector and higher education institutes. This represents an opportunity to use instruments based on international skill frameworks that allow to understand a progressive path of the development of skills or competencies and their evolution. These frameworks and its use could ensure the responsibility level declared for each skill according their characteristics and the type of professional. For the Information Technology professional, we found the SFIA framework like a flexible and two-dimensional model, adaptable to the needs of the business sector and higher educational institutions. This framework consists of different skills distributed in varied levels of responsibility, which describe the needs of the area on an international level, setting a communication bridge between the professionals, business sector and educational institutions. It becomes an advantage to understand the level of development of the skills, because allows students and professionals to identify their own gaps and solve them. The same advantage applies to the educational institutes turning them into improvements in their own indicators, and finally in results that support the business sector and the ecosystem formed by the professionals, educational institutes, and the business sector.