Operations Skill Matrix and Development - Verber · XLS file · Web viewOperations Skill Matrix...

OPERATIONS SKILL MATRIX AND LEVELINGSCOPE Responsible for SelfLEVEL N-1 N-2 N-3TITLE Entry/Intern Individual Contributor

Work Ethic Gets things done: Works hard. Takes responsibility for their own actions: doesn't blameshift. When faced with difficulties, looks for solutions. Displays a sense of personal pride for their work.

Customer Support

Communication

Senior Individual Contributor

Viewing everyone you interact with as a customer. Following through on commitments and taking the extra steps to show the consumer that they are important. Treating all consumers with respect. Demonstrating the ability to make decisions in the best interest of both the consumer, NetOps, and our company Expressing professionalism, understanding, fairness, self-control and willingness to share alternatives and information. Recognizes the need for and maintains confidentiality when necessary. Viewing the client as your job rather than as an interruption of your job.

Has reasonable verbal skills

Has reasonable written and verbal skills.

Good written and verbal skills; Ability to work well with others.

Work Quality & Efficiency

Follows team processes and reads documents. Digs in and makes progress on work.

Follows team processes. Documents work. Attention to detail. Digs in and makes progress on work.

Improves existing team processes. Creates effective documention used by others. Attention to detail. Digs in and makes progress on work. Stays focused and isn't distracted by irrelevant things.

N-1 N-2 N-3

Decision Making: Creativity, Judgment, Initiative & Flexibility

Needs direction; Knows when to ask questions. Takes initiative to tackle tasks relevant to skill level.

Can work independently with minimal direction. Takes initiative to tackle tasks relevant to skill level. Capable of and responsive to change.

Self-starting, able to work with minimal direction from management. Understands need for lateral thinking; Displays willingness to adapt to new ways of doing business.

Teamwork & Culture

Strives to be a team player. Does their best to support the team and extend trust and confidence to others.

Strives to be a team player. Fosters team by demonstrating trust, confidence, and commitment in others' actions and decisions to create a supportive work environment.

Effective team player. Fosters team by demonstrating trust, confidence, and commitment in others' actions and decisions to create a supportive work environment. Is able to detect when things aren't working and works to address problems.

Technical Leadership

Able to scope out small projects;

Able to scope out small projects; build packages; do service deployment;

Able to scope out medium sized projects; service deployment; Able to drive simple live cutovers

TECHNICAL ABILITY

n/a

Operations

System Design and Architecture

Appreciates basic trade-offs for large scale administration.

Understands basic components in service. Able to create requirements which reflect solid large scale administrative principles.

Diagnosis & Troubleshooting

Able to follow basic diagnosis scripts and resolve expected problems.

Able to follow basic diagnosis scripts. Has basic understanding of decomposing problems into smaller problems. Knows when to pull in someone to help.

Uses causal reasoning to triage problems. Demonstrated ability to decompose complex problems. Able to engage in lateral investigations.

Understands the need for operations-ready systems.

Understands the need for operations-ready systems, can articulate the need for automation; has a "trust nothing" mindset. Detail oriented.

Able to clearly articulate key operational principles, able to identify key items to be automated; able to estimate what is most likely to break. Extremely detail oriented. Always has a plan B. Able to perform capacity planning.

Programming Ability (Shift right

1 for NOC, networking, and

facilities; Level 5-8 applicable to technical track)

able to understand and write simple scripts.

able to write scripts; knowledge of 1-2 scripting languages; can read C. Understands code management.

can program in an administrative language; Can port & install C programs and create packages. Understands code management.

O/S Knowledge & Diversity (shift

right 1 for people not working on

hosts day to day)

Good users skills with one OS.

Strong user skills in primary OS; Basic admin experience Understands local OS environment

Expert user skills with one OS; Strong admin skills with one OS; User knowledge of second OS; Basic performance tuning skills;

LAN & Networking Experience (shift right 2 for people not in networking group and make 3rd level ceiling)

familiarity with hubs & switches, routers

basic understanding of LAN, UDP/TCP, ports and services, Nets/Subnets/Routing. Basic network gear configuration experience

Understands LAN routing protocols; Intermediate network equipment configuration skills and WAN circuit management. Able to examine packet traces to debug problems.

Security (Levels above 3

applicable to security folks

only)

Understands the need for security; knows to ask for help with respect to security.

Understands the need for security. Has basic host security knowledge; understands the concept of a firewall. Takes a defensive posture.

Understands security theory. Can install and configure basic firewalls. Understands VPN technology and implementation. Understanding of certification, authentication and intrusion detection. Understands basic intrusion response.

Databases (Shift right by 2 for non DBA, and cap at

1)

Can write basic SQL queries; Understands basic database concept; able design a basic schema; can perform basic database monitoring.

Can write SQL and read PL/SQL. Can perform basic database installation, creation, and monitoring knowledge; Understands basic database concept; Understands basic replication. Can perform basic database tuning. Can be responsible for basic database backup and recovery.

Can write complex SQL and PL/SQL; can perform database installation, creation, and monitoring knowledge with basic trouble-shooting skills; Can establish backup policies; Can tune performance; Understands database internals; Understands database networking; Able to evaluate replication strategies.

Facilities (shift right 2 for people who don't work in

a data center, Level 2 max for

not facilities team)

Understands need for, and able to cleanly wire, rack, and mount devices

Can clearly articulate data center standards. Basic electrical signalling (ethernet length, how many pairs, etc). Familiarity with datacenter facilities infrastructure (Power, Air flow, cabling).

Can clearly articulate data center standards and can develop labeling and basic layout plans. Understands signal flows on all media (and can use test sets for those), Understands power (phases, ground, etc), able to deal with vendors to resolve technical issues.

0-3 year 2-6 years 4+ years

Degree 2-years or equivalent BA/BS or equivalent BA/BS or equivalent

NOTE: The section on technical leadership, as well as many of the soft skills needs to be updated making use of insights from action research, orginizational learning, and leadership fields

Mark Verber © 2005, Some Rights Reserved

Telco (N/A for other Groups)

Basic knowledge of transports types (digital hierarchy) and basic alarms. Can follow test plans to verify provisioning is correct.

Can test transports and knowledge of components used. Knowledge of specific network advance features. Detailed understanding of provision and able to debug provisioning problems. Able to read and understand carrier billing. Able to decode common signally protocols.

Detailed knowledge of carrier transport and advanced features and understanding how those features are implemented. Able to guess what phone company has deployed. Able to order circuits and specific all features. Able to read and understand carrier billing and understanding tariff structures. Able to read basic signally trace.

NOC (N/A for other groups.

Specific for the NOC)

Can tell the difference between Red, Yellow, and Green; Perform basic maintenance functions such as push-truth, Keyme, etc; Will assist with diagnosis of issues. Correctly decides when to escalate to more senior personnel. Understands the documentation methods that are used by the NOC; Able to understand the material.

Tracks alerts as they arrive in the system and are able to take initial actions for remediation; Understands concepts about marking hosts in and out of service; can update load balancer configs; Perform pod maintenance and activations; can perform basic functionality and host level testing of the maintenance that was performed; Able to own and resolve simple issues. Correctly decides when to escalate to more senior personnel.

Tracks alerts as they arrive in the system. Able to correlate events as they pertain to other activities. Able to remedy situations based on alert information. Able to perform complex upgrades of service groups, and confirm that things are functioning correctly when complete. Will own issues with medium complexity and will drive them to resolution.

Relevant Work Experience

See Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License for terms

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

OPERATIONS SKILL MATRIX AND LEVELINGResponsible for Team Responsible for Company and Community

N-4 N-5 N-6 N-7Staff / Manager Sr Staff / Sr. Manager Architect / Director

Gets things done: Works hard. Takes responsibility for their own actions: doesn't blameshift. When faced with difficulties, looks for solutions. Displays a sense of personal pride for their work.

Senior Architect / Senior Director


Strong verbal & written skills; Works well with others; Can distill complex issue to a short and simple explination. Can work with upper management;

Very strong verbal & written skills; Works well with others. Can bridge communication gaps. Understands the need to develop a listener oriented communication strategy; Works with upper managers;

Very strong verbal & written skills; Works well with others and bridges communication gaps; Able to communicate cross cultures; Can work with executives; Able to speak publicly;

Very strong verbal & written skills; Improve any team they are part of; Able to communicate position even when others have conflicting viewpoints; Works well with executives; Accomplished speaker.

Understands quality improvement process. Creates new processes and documentation. Stays focused on key issues and efficient in time use. Produces the desired outcome with a minimum of effort. Able to estimate schedules.

Leads quality improvement process and motivates others. Authors team processes and documents. Highly effective at completed work on time. Able to effectively estimate schedules. Finds ways to improve efficiency of team.

Can drive meta processes. Authors organizational process. Attention to detail. Highly effective at completed work on time. Able to effectively estimate schedules. Is able to improve efficiency across organizations.

Drives meta processes; Authors organizational processes. Attention to detail. Highly effective at completed work on time. Able to effectively estimate schedules. Has a proven track record of improving the company's overall efficiency.

N-4 N-5 N-6 N-7

Able to initiate projects; Able to provide direction to management on technical matters. Identifies what needs to be done and acts before being asked to or required by the situation.

Able to initiate cross team projects; Able to provide direction to management on technical matters. Consistently anticipates and drives needed changes.

Initiates cross team projects; Provides out-of-the-box solutions to difficult problems. Able to balance technical and business needs. Consistently anticipates and drives needed changes.

Initiates cross team projects; Provides out-of-the-box solutions to difficult problems. Able to balance technical and business needs. Consistently anticipates and drives needed changes.

Effective team player. Fosters team by demonstrating trust, confidence, and commitment in others' actions and decisions to create a supportive work environment. Is able to detect when things aren't working and works to address problems. Introduces new members to team culture. Encourages others to value team culture.

Improves any team they are part of. Actively looks to provide mentorship and encouragement to team members; Involvement with outside community. Reaches out to other teams; Regularly examines team culture looking for ways to improve team dynamics;

Improves any team they are part of; Actively looks to provide mentorship and encouragement to team members; Involvement with outside community. Reaches out to other teams; Regularly examines company culture looking for ways to improve it; Is able to separate personal agenda from company direction.

Improves any team they are part of; Proven as a transformational coach; Involvement with outside community. Reaches out to other teams; Regularly examines company culture looking for ways to improve it; Is able to separate personal agenda from company direction.

Ability to mentor team members; plan and provide technical leadership for medium sized projects. Able to create formal requirements for a project. Able to own live cutovers.

Ability to plan and provide technical leadership for large sized projects; Ability to provide mentorship & technical leadership to staff; Participates with the external technical community. Skilled at formalizing requirements for projects.

Ability to plan and provide technical leadership for large size projects across organizational structures and anticipate needs; Ability to provide mentorship & technical leadership to technical staff; Provides leadership to technical community (published, active committee member, etc.)

Proven ability to plan and provide technical leadership for large size projects across organizational structures and anticipate needs; Ability to provide mentorship & technical leadership to technical staff; Provides leadership to technical community (published, active committee member, etc.)

Solid understanding of production services. Expert in large scale administration. Understands basic techniques and trade-offs for HA (High Availability) systems.

Expert in large scale administration. Able to design complex services which have high availability requirements;

Ability to design complex systems trading off technical issues and other factors. Skilled at creating requirements from customer interviews.

Proven ability to architect complex systems which meet customers' needs even when need isn't well articulated.

Uses causal reasoning to triage problems. Skilled at decomposing complex problems. Skilled at lateral investigations. Skilled at weighting options and can reason from first principles.

Uses causal reasoning to triage problems. Skilled at decomposing complex problems. Skilled at lateral investigations. Able to rapidly correlate problems against experience. Can write good post mortem.

Able to diagnose any technical problem in a timely fashion. Can write a good client facing RCA (Root Cause Analysis).

Able to diagnose any problem, even when it crosses company boundries.

Able to clearly articulate key operational principles, able to identify key items to be automated; able to estimate what is most likely to break. Extremely detail oriented. Always has a plan B. Experiences at capacity planning

Able to clearly articulate key operational principles, able to identify key items to be automated; able to estimate what is most likely to break. Extremely detail oriented. Able to plan for all normal and abnormal situations.

program in an administrative language; Can write simple C programs. Able to scope small size software projects.

fluent in Perl, C or other systems language; known system API and can write networking code; able to design a good API

project level coding experience; know 3+ languages; able to decompose complex systems and identify key APIs.

project level coding experience; know 3+ languages; able to decompose complex systems and identify key APIs. Theory background.

Expert user and admin skills primary OS; Strong user and admin skills with second OS and/or specialty systems; Strong understanding of primary OS kernel.

Expert user and admin skills primary OS; Strong user and admin skills with second OS and/or specialty systems; Expert understanding of primary OS kernel; OS theory background.

Deep WAN and LAN routing protocols experience; Any to work to resolve problems from hardware to application layer. Understands Networking Theory.

Deep WAN and LAN protocols experience; Any to work to resolve problems to application layer. Experience designing networks for HA services. Network theory.

Understands complex site design. Experience dealing with Internet scale topology. Deep appreciate of trade-off for service availible. Understands QoS.

Strong security design and theory; Design and configure complex firewalls. Can build basic certification, authentication and intrusion detection systems. Basic understanding of incident response and forensics acquisition.

Expert understanding of current security technology, including firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection, certification and authentication. Designs site-wide security infrastructure. Can lead incident response. Solid knowledge of forensics analysis, and legal implications.

Expert understanding of current security technology, including firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection, certification and authentication. Can lead company wide security program which implements industry standards. Skilled at balancing technical and business requirements.

Expert understanding of current security technology, including firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection, certification and authentication. Sr Dir. has led company wide security program which implements industry standards. Sr Arch: Has moved the industry forward.

Extensive experience in daily database administration; defines policies within database; Skilled at schema design; Performs application and database tuning; Defines data recovery strategy; Has good knowledge of the distributed database; Can develop database replication strategies;

Fully understand database internals and features; Expert in schema design; Has thorough system and database tuning knowledge; Can devise complex strategies to meet data available and performance metrics.

Fully understand database internals and features; Expert in schema design; Can devise complex strategies to meet availability and performance metrics; data warehousing and experience doing information management.

Fully understand database internals and features; Expert in schema design; Can devise complex strategies to meet availability and performance metrics; data warehousing and experience doing information management. advanced information processing expertise (SLT, etc).

Can create a project book. Understands signal flows on all media (and can use test sets for those). Can model basic cooling. Can make tradeoff for power distrubution. Can lay out physical space designed for reliability. Can order and manage all materials for a build out. Manage vendors and subcontractors.

Has built data centers in the past. Outside plant experience with OC-X. Can model and resolve cooling. Designs for workflow and reliablity. Establish specifications for subcontractors and can run geo-diverse work crews.

Facilities infrastructure engineering experience; able to develop standards and best practices across multiple datacenter sites; plan for company growth and changing business needs.

6+ years 8+ years 12+ years 15+ years

BS in CS or equivalent MS or equivalent MS or equivalent MS or equivalent



Detailed knowledge of carrier transport and advanced features and understanding how those features are implemented with specific knowledge of carriers equipment. Creates feature templates. Understanding tariffs and how billing integrates with carrier equipment. Understanding what networks can support what signaling. Able to debug complex signaling issues.

Detailed knowledge of carrier transport and advanced features and understanding how those features are implemented with specific knowledge of carriers equipment. Deep understanding of carrier provisioning and be able to effective escalate problems. Understanding tariffs and how billing integrates with carrier equipment. Can design and build a phone network.

Expert on transport, signaling, switching, provisioning. Command of voice network features, and how they are build. Able to formulate new services using existing and new protocols.

All of the prior. Also understands the infrastructure associated with the monitoring system. Able to manage maintenance activities of others and keep tabs on the relationships of what is occurring and the effects that are being seen. Will manage other members of Netops and drive issues to resolution. Owns and resolves complex issues. Involves senior management as necessary.

All of the prior. Also understands the infrastructure associated with the monitoring system. Able to manage maintenance activities of others and keep tabs on the relationships of what is occurring and the effects that are being seen. Will manage other members of Netops and drive issues to resolution. Owns and resolves complex issues. Involves senior management as necessary.

OPERATIONS SKILL MATRIX AND LEVELINGResponsible for Company and Community

N-8Fellow/VP

Gets things done: Works hard. Takes responsibility for their own actions: doesn't blameshift. When faced with difficulties, looks for solutions. Displays a sense of personal pride for their work.


Very strong verbal & written skills; Highly effective at getting consensus even with others who have conflicting agendas; Works with executives outside company Accomplished speaker.

Drives meta processes; Authors organizational processes. Attention to detail. Highly effective at completed work on time. Able to effectively estimate schedules. Has transformed company's efficiency.

N-8

Fundamentally changes what products and services are offered; Proven ability to anticipate trends; Able to spot discontinuities in technical and business landscape.

Creates a culture that allows the team to operate at peak efficency and learn together.

Proven ability to drive cross company projects; Ability to provide mentorship/technical leadership to technical staff; Provides leadership to technical community (published, active committee member, etc.)

Has created completely new or novel solutions to exceptionally difficult problems though effective re-framing changing what constrains are applied

Can solve intractable problems by moving the industry or redefining the problem space.

Expert understanding of current security technology, including firewalls, VPNs, intrusion detection, certification and authentication. VP: Has led company wide security program which implements industry standards. Fellow: Has made major advance in state of the art.

20+ years

MS or equivalent



RESOURCES FOR OPERATIONS CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Help to move to the next levelLEVEL N-1 N-2

TITLE Entry Individual Contributor

Work Ethic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Covey. Getting Things Done - David Allen

Customer Support Raving Fans

Communication Elements of Style - White

Work Quality & Efficiency

Laderal Thinking - DeBono

Teamwork & Culture Built to Last - Collins

TECHNICAL ABILITY N-1 N-2Technical Leadership

de Bono's Thinking Course

Operations

Effective Executive - Drucker

Decision Making: Creativity, Judgment, Initiative &

Flexibility

Effective Executive - Drucker

System Design and Architecture

Internal Architecture and Design Documents

Diagnostic & Troubleshooting [[Work in

Progress]]

Programming Ability The Perl Manual

O/S Knowledge & Diversity

Security

Databases Attend OracleWorld

Facilities


The UNIX Programming Environment - Pike. Tutorials at LISA

System Administration - Evi Nemeth. Attend LISA Technical Sessions

LAN & Networking Experience

TCP/IP Illustationed - Stevens. Attend NANOG

Practical Unix and Internet Security - Spaf & Garfinkel

Building Internet Firewalls - Chapman & Zwicky, Firewalls and Internet Security - Cheswick & Bellovin. SANS material

See Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License for terms

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/


Help to move to the next levelN-3 N-4 N-5

Staff / Manager Sr Staff / Sr. Manager

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Covey. Getting Things Done - David Allen

Raving Fans

The Courage to Teach,

N-3 N-4 N-5One Minute Manager

How to Solve It - Polya

Senior Individual Contributor

The Pyramid Principle Logic in Writing & Thinking - Barbara Minto

Six Thinking Hats - De Bono

Divide or Conquer. Public Speaking Seminars

What is Lean Six Sigma - George, Rowlands, Kastle

The Goal - Goldratt. Six Sigma - Barrows

Software Cost - Bourne. The Fifth Dimension

Strategic Decision Making - Kirkwood

Good to Great. Leadership is an Art - Max De Pree

Servant Leadership - Greenleaf. First Break the Rules - Buckingham.

Software Requirements - Wiegers

Systems Engineering and Analysis - Blanchard & Fabrycky

System Architecting - Rechtin. Attend USENIX OSDI, SOSP

Code Complete


The Practice of Programming by Brian Kerninghan & Rob Pike

Practice of System and Network Admin -Hogan & Limoncelli. Solaris Internals - Mauro & McDougall

Distributed Systems - Tanenbaum

Routing the Internet - Huitema. Introduction to BGP4 - John Stewart III

Applied Cryptography - Schneier. USENIX Security Workshop

Computer Forensics Workshop


Help to move to the next levelN-6 N-7

Architect / Director

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Covey. Getting Things Done - David Allen

Raving Fans

Sources of Power - Klein

Managing Innovation - HBS

N-6 N-7

Senior Architect / Senior Director

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