What is SFIA

SFIA is an easy to use common reference model

SFIA is a practical resource for people who manage or work in or with business and technology professionals who design, develop, implement, manage and protect the data and technology that power the digital world.

SFIA brings together professional skills, behaviours / behavioural factors and knowledge. The behavioural factors are distributed throughout the generic attributes specified for each level of responsibility.

• It provides a framework consisting of professional skills on one axis and seven levels of responsibility on the other.
• It describes the professional skills at various levels of responsibility.
• It describes the levels of responsibility, in terms of generic attributes of Autonomy, Influence, Complexity, Business Skills and Knowledge.

SFIA is updated frequently to remain relevant and aligned with the needs of industry and business and current thinking.

A common language for skills in the digital world

SFIA gives individuals and organisations a common language to define skills and expertise in a consistent way. The use of clear language, avoiding technical jargon and acronyms, makes SFIA accessible to all involved in the work as well as people in supporting roles such as human resources, learning and development, organisation design, and procurement. It can solve the common translation issues that hinder communication and effective partnerships within organisations and multi-disciplinary teams.

This consistency means that SFIA works well for both large and small organisations: they share an approach, a vocabulary, and a focus on skills and capability. SFIA works well across large multi-national organisations and throughout the supply chain to establish a common language for skills and competency management.

SFIA is especially beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises who simply do not have the resources to develop and maintain their own skills and competency framework and yet want to benefit from one.

Why use SFIA?

SFIA has been designed to be completely flexible and to fit seamlessly with a user’s established ways of working.

• SFIA does not define a fixed methodology or prescribe organisational structures, roles or jobs: it simply provides clear descriptions of skills and levels of responsibility.
• SFIA can be used across multiple industries and organisational types. It’s an ideal framework, whether for individuals, small and large teams, departments or business functions, small and medium-sized enterprises or entire organisations with thousands of employees.

Universal applicability

SFIA originated as a framework for the ICT community. It has evolved to be a framework that defines the skills and competencies required by business and technology professionals who design, develop, implement, manage and protect the data and technology that power the digital world.

SFIA is used across a breadth of business and professional functions. Many roles in industry are blended and require a mix of technical and non-technical skills and SFIA is ideally suited to this.

SFIA’s universal applicability means that it can readily be applied and also extended beyond the digital professions into any technical or non-technical domain. The user base continues to find new areas to use SFIA, which is a visible sign of SFIA’s usefulness, integrity and flexible design.

SFIA enables integration of different professional work using the levels of responsibility as the foundation, whether that be framework to framework or an organisation’s structure to the SFIA Framework. This provides a global common reference model for integration.