The concept of T-shaped skills, or T-shaped persons is a metaphor used in job recruitment to describe the abilities of persons in the workforce. The vertical bar on the letter T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one's own.
The earliest popular reference is by David Guest in 1991. [1] Tim Brown, CEO of the IDEO design consultancy, endorsed this approach to résumé assessment as a method to build interdisciplinary work teams for creative processes. Earlier references can be found; [2] in the 1980s the term "T-shaped man" was used internally by McKinsey & Company for recruiting and developing consultants and partners, both male and female.
The term T-shaped skills is also common in the agile software development world and refers to the need for cross-skilled developers and testers in an agile team, e.g. a scrum team.
Other shapes have also been proposed:
Γ- and Μ-shaped individuals (gamma and mu, respectively) have been described by Brittany Fiore in her ethnographic work of data science research communities to indicate people with supporting strengths in computationally- and software-intensive fields. [3] [4]
Similarly, π-shaped skills (after the Greek letter pi) refer to "a broad mastery of general management skills atop a few spikes of deep functional or domain expertise". [5]
A polymath or polyhistor is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge but others can be gifted at explaining abstractly and creatively.
Security engineering is the process of incorporating security controls into an information system so that the controls become an integral part of the system's operational capabilities. It is similar to other systems engineering activities in that its primary motivation is to support the delivery of engineering solutions that satisfy pre-defined functional and user requirements, but it has the added dimension of preventing misuse and malicious behavior. Those constraints and restrictions are often asserted as a security policy.
A software company is an organisation — owned either by the state or private — established for profit whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry.
The rational unified process (RUP) is an iterative software development process framework created by the Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM since 2003. RUP is not a single concrete prescriptive process, but rather an adaptable process framework, intended to be tailored by the development organizations and software project teams that will select the elements of the process that are appropriate for their needs. RUP is a specific implementation of the Unified Process.
A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined finish; regardless of industry. Project managers are first point of contact for any issues or discrepancies arising from within the heads of various departments in an organization before the problem escalates to higher authorities, as project representative.
Software development is the process of designing and implementing a software solution to satisfy a user. The process is more encompassing than programming, writing code, in that it includes conceiving the goal, evaluating feasibility, analyzing requirements, design, testing and release. The process is part of software engineering which also includes organizational management, project management, configuration management and other aspects.
A technical writer is a professional communicator whose task is to convey complex information in simple terms to an audience of the general public or a very select group of readers. Technical writers research and create information through a variety of delivery media. Example types of information include online help, manuals, white papers, design specifications, project plans, and software test plans. With the rise of e-learning, technical writers are increasingly hired to develop online training material.
A video game producer is the top person in charge of overseeing development of a video game.
Agile software development is an umbrella term for approaches to developing software that reflect the values and principles agreed upon by The Agile Alliance, a group of 17 software practitioners in 2001. As documented in their Manifesto for Agile Software Development the practitioners value:
The Personal Software Process (PSP) is a structured software development process that is designed to help software engineers better understand and improve their performance by bringing discipline to the way they develop software and tracking their predicted and actual development of the code. It clearly shows developers how to manage the quality of their products, how to make a sound plan, and how to make commitments. It also offers them the data to justify their plans. They can evaluate their work and suggest improvement direction by analyzing and reviewing development time, defects, and size data. The PSP was created by Watts Humphrey to apply the underlying principles of the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to the software development practices of a single developer. It claims to give software engineers the process skills necessary to work on a team software process (TSP) team.
A subject-matter expert (SME) is a person who has accumulated great knowledge in a particular field or topic and this level of knowledge is demonstrated by the person's degree, licensure, and/or through years of professional experience with the subject. For example, a PhD in chemistry could be easily declared as a SME in chemistry, or a person with a Second Class Radiotelegraph License or equivalent issued by the national licensing body could be considered a SME in radiotelegraphy. A person with a master's degree in electronic engineering could be considered a subject-matter expert in electronics, or a person with many years of experience in machining could be considered a SME in machining.
An application analyst is someone whose job is to support a given application or applications. This may entail some computer programming, some system administration skills, and the ability to analyze a given problem, diagnose it and find its root cause, and then either solve it or pass the problem on to the relevant people if it does not lie within the application analyst's area of responsibility. Typically an application analyst will be responsible for supporting bespoke applications programmed with a variety of programming languages and using a variety of database systems, middleware systems and the like. It is a form of 3rd level technical support/help desk. The role may or may not involve some customer contact but most often it involves getting some description of the problem from help desk, making a diagnosis and then either creating a fix or passing the problem on to someone who is responsible for the actual problem area.
Software craftsmanship is an approach to software development that emphasizes the coding skills of the software developers. It is a response by software developers to the perceived ills of the mainstream software industry, including the prioritization of financial concerns over developer accountability.
Game testing, also called quality assurance (QA) testing within the video game industry, is a software testing process for quality control of video games. The primary function of game testing is the discovery and documentation of software defects. Interactive entertainment software testing is a highly technical field requiring computing expertise, analytic competence, critical evaluation skills, and endurance. In recent years the field of game testing has come under fire for being extremely strenuous and unrewarding, both financially and emotionally.
Competence is the set of demonstrable personal characteristics or KSAOs that enable job performance at a high level with consistency and minimal difficulty. Competency in human resources is an organizational criterion for excellence that encompasses the behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable employees to perform their roles effectively and reliably.
Scrum is an agile team collaboration framework commonly used in software development and other industries.
Agile testing is a software testing practice that follows the principles of agile software development. Agile testing involves all members of a cross-functional agile team, with special expertise contributed by testers, to ensure delivering the business value desired by the customer at frequent intervals, working at a sustainable pace. Specification by example is used to capture examples of desired and undesired behavior and guide coding.
Business agility refers to rapid, continuous, and systematic evolutionary adaptation and entrepreneurial innovation directed at gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. Business agility can be sustained by maintaining and adapting the goods and services offered to meet with customer demands, adjusting to the marketplace changes in a business environment, and taking advantage of available human resources.
A programming team is a team of people who develop or maintain computer software. They may be organised in numerous ways, but the egoless programming team and chief programmer team have been common structures.
Perforce Software, Inc. is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle management, web application servers, debugging tools, platform automation, and agile planning software.