Digital Capable
Talent

Digital capable talent is not an endpoint. It is a system that looks ahead — sourcing, onboarding and continuously building skills that are aligned with digital business needs and outcomes. It also means ensuring work management, rewards and management practices align with a more self-service, autonomous Agile practice.

You likely need to balance between digital product/cloud-native engineers and core ERP or SaaS service-oriented resources. Your HR is a key partner in defining strategies to refresh and build talent that may support apprenticeship/applied models and coach/doer partnerships.

Score: 100-80

Section Scoring

100 - 80 PTS

You have a digital talent engine that sources, onboards and continuously builds skills aligned with digital business needs and outcomes. The system’s effectiveness is based on contribution to speed-to-value and value-to-investment. You use tactics like contract to hire to lower hiring risk and accelerate access to talent. In specific cases, you invest in partnerships that can be coaches/doers so that teams natively grow skills needed sustainably. You have a minimum viable balance between digital-native product engineers and more traditional IT ERP or SaaS resources. Your IT leaders are leaders/coaches and focus on talent-building strategies.

Digital Execution Ready

100 - 80 PTS

The organization has defined digital and Agile roles/skills required but lags in the ability to source at the necessary speed. Learning and development have the right scope but mainly deliver training, and their measure is the number of people accessing training. IT is transitioning to a minimum viable balance between cloud-native product development engineers and ERP or SaaS orientation. Help is needed to accelerate access to talent, applied skills building and evolving sustainable continuous learning that serves business outcomes.

Digital in Process

80-60 PTS

Sourcing follows an annual budget cycle. The recruiting model waits for budget approval in January to start. You may lose 6-9 months before the right talent is available for new product. Resource strategies are measured based on cost and a project-based CapEx model. IT managers are effective at contract worker sourcing and contract management. They need new skills to be leaders/coaches and/or drive talent-building across their teams. The bulk of IT engineers are ERP or oriented in SaaS rather than product development.

Digital Gaps

60-0 PTS

Questions & Answers

The question-and-answer section outlines why the questions are important, how they are weighted, and what best practice looks like.

Does your organization align skills development priorities to business outcomes and have a well-rounded program beyond just training and certification?

Why we ask this:

All companies have learning and development programs. This question looks at the extent to which you have aligned opportunities with new digital strategies both from a business and technology or work management perspective. It also looks at the sophistication of those programs and evolution from traditional training and certification emphasis to job rotation, apprenticeship or partner coach/doer and other applied learning mechanisms.

How we weighed this question:

Digital business implies changing channels, technologies, and workflows. This means successful companies will invest in refreshing skills to enable execution excellence.

What best looks like:

Leaders regularly review alignment with current and future strategic direction and measure themselves on accelerating access to the right skills at the right time. They focus both on external sourcing and internal skills building. They have mechanisms to proactively identify internal resources with the right aptitude and support specific talent investment. In addition to training and certification, leaders emphasize job rotation, apprenticeship or partner coach/doer and other applied learning. They reward employees for and celebrate their proactive and continuous learning actions.

Next steps:

Look at the laundry list of skills gaps that impede delivery of the most strategic and highest potential impact digital product. Do a high-level assessment for acceleration potential of external sourcing, internal skills building, partner coach/do options or other.
Look for areas where the leap from as-is and to-be digital skills is realistic. For example, transitioning senior QA talent to SRE is more likely than turning project management into a digital data architect organization.
Communicate skills priorities, act on the fastest time-to-market tactics, and iterate.
Reward/celebrate individuals who demonstrate ownership for learning based on priorities.

What best describes your approach to building or sourcing digital skills?

Why we ask this:

Like in other areas, Digital Talent capability and acquisition practices need to extend the way they source and build talent to ensure business success. Typical reactive processes driven by requisition approvals over evergreen talent management will not enable right talent at right time in right amounts.

How we weighed this question:

Having capable and experienced talent working on strategic product ensures delivery of business outcomes. If you are waiting 6-9 months to source and onboard talent, you lose time to market. Digital engineering and business leaders need to be focused on how the develop, manage and retain the right talent pool. This is not just the province of HR.

What best looks like:

Digital product executives, engineering leaders and talent frequently discuss the roadmap to align on future talent needs. Talent management and acquisition is managed like a product to deliver digital capable talent and has hired executives with experience in building Agile/DevOps/Cloud organizations. They have a roadmap and strategy that includes external sourcing and internal skills building. They are measured based on contribution to delivery or acceleration of new products/new revenues.

Next steps:

Talk with your engineering leaders using the digital readiness workbook on what digital effective means
Define implications to talent and what might be needed to break old habits of only sourcing based on approved budget/open reqs vs. keeping a constant eye on talent
Look to partners that can build product and sustainable skills of internal teams. Use internal/external friction in a positive way to incentivize growth

How easy is it for employees to access training, skills acquisition, or other programs?

Why we ask this:

Companies that value continuous learning make it easy for individuals to understand what skills are strategic and to self-serve development. Heavy processes and approvals are inhibitors.

How we weighed this question:

The score weight is based on how organizations support continuous learning by facilitating employee access to opportunities for building skills that are strategic to business impact.

What best looks like:

There is regular review and communication of business strategy and skills needed. Employees can access and build skills according to their aptitude and interests on demand. Learning and development programs are measured by how they accelerate access and usage.

Next steps:

Take an enablement approach to start. Choose a skill area, like Product Ownership. What needs to be done to remove cycle time to access existing programs?
Communicate process change and measure use/access increases.

Are resources used to build digital product considered OpEx?

Why we ask this:

Many companies rely on CapEx IT funding because of depreciation. This has enabled IT to expand using outsourced systems integration or other contract workers. However, CapEx over OpEx metrics can be an anti-pattern when transitioning to product-oriented execution teams.

How we weighed this question:

In an ideal world, product execution teams are full-time resources dedicated to a team and/or product.

What best looks like:

For digital products, leaders have established durable full-time-equivalent product teams. They see building internal skills and IP as a critical value. The OpEx cost is more than made up by revenue growth and measurable execution effectiveness improvements. Finance has adapted accordingly.

Next steps:

Talk with your CFO, where and what is required to support OpEx over CaPex treatment for specific and highly strategic digital products?

Do you regularly use your product roadmaps to build out and prioritize engineering skills acquisition roadmap?

Why we ask this:

Digitally capable talent programs need to align with projected needs. If the primary focus is managing approved requisition recruiting, the organization cannot deliver at the velocity necessary.

How we weighed this question:

Fixing current talent gaps may take precedence; however, sustainable digital effectiveness requires talent strategies that also look to future needs.

What best looks like:

Skills sourcing and building are aligned with projected talent requirements for just-in-time acquisition. Engineering leaders keep “warm” talent pools for sourcing based on where digital strategy is going in addition to serving current needs.

Next steps:

Start by talking with your HR executive to gauge current understanding of digital skills, gaps, and future needs
Communicate skills priorities, invest for the fastest time-to-market tactics and iterate.

How long does it take to get the capacity and talent needed for digital execution?

Why we ask this:

Given the timeline for traditional recruiting and high demand for digital talent, your sourcing system must understand digital business needs well ahead of when talent is needed. Cycle time to build digital execution teams needed to deliver new product, markets, or revenues can significantly and negatively impact time to value.

How we weighed this question:

Digital effectiveness requires access to the right talent at the right time in the right amount.

What best looks like:

There is an engine for ensuring the right talent in the right amount at the right time so that new digital products, markets, and/or revenues are not delayed. HR is measured based on their ability to improve time to value.

Next steps:

Make improvements in time to value a KPI for your talent team.
Establish measures that track the impact on product time to value. For example, a 6-9 month recruiting process for a product projected to deliver $1M monthly costs $6-9M in the top line.
Look at your most strategic and long-standing skills gaps. Typically, these are in new digital execution areas like product owner, DevOps, and SRE.
Dictate acceleration strategies and fund accordingly.

Which statement best describes engineering career progression?

Why we ask this:

The competitive talent market requires financial institutions to behave more like technology companies to attract technology talent. They, therefore, need to adopt long-standing technology company practices separating management and technology-based career paths.

How we weighed this question:
This score weight shows how your financial institution understands and values digital technology skills necessary for delivering future business growth and therefore has adopted more technology company career paths.

What best looks like:

The company has adopted more technology career path practices to attract better talent. They recognize that the best future employees may not be looking for jobs in banking. Engineers have a parallel technical career path that does not require people management. The technology path includes titles like principal engineer, senior principal engineer, etc., and appropriate demonstration for progression (i.e., publishing, external recognition of expertise, patents, etc.).

Next steps:

If a technical-only career path doesn’t exist, encourage your CIO/engineering leadership to adopt mature technology company practices.
Bring HR in to establish consistent and parallel job grades and compensation.
Ensure these options are marketed internally and externally (i.e., Job requisitions).

Resources

For more detail, check out BreakFree’s point of view on Digital Capable Talent.

Relevant Blog Posts:

Forget Training, Build a Learning Culture

Train in DevOps

Is your team Cross-Functional or Multi-Functional

Workbook Sections