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What is Project Skills Readiness Level?
Work comprises cognitive and manual labor. Manual labor involves physical effort to produce tangible results, while cognitive labor requires thinking and decision-making to address the essential questions of "what," "how," and "why" a task is performed.[2]:
- What needs to be done?
- How should it be done?
- Why is it being done?
Each of these questions can be broken down into increasingly detailed sub-questions. This process continues until a clear understanding is reached, enabling the individual to proceed with manual labor. Importantly, cognitive labor always precedes manual labor because tasks require planning, decision-making, or problem-solving before execution.
For each task, Required Knowledge represents the complexity of the task, i.e. what must be known to complete it, while Prior Knowledge refers to the skills, experience, and understanding an individual already possesses. The gap between these two is the Knowledge to Be Discovered. It represents what the individual thinks they don't know, given what they think they do know. Any uncertainty or need for additional clarity about a task implies the existence of some form of a knowledge gap - even if it is small or subtle.
Questions are the cognitive tools we use to close knowledge gaps. Questions arise only when there is Knowledge to Be Discovered. The existence of any question implies a perceived gap in knowledge, understanding, or certainty. Whether the gap is large (fundamental knowledge is missing) or small (details need confirmation or alternatives are being explored), the act of questioning reflects the Knowledge work i.e. the effort to bridge that gap. Conversely, if an individual believes they know everything necessary about a task, there is no uncertainty, and no questions arise.
- Imagine a scale: on one side is the required knowledge and on the other is the prior knowledge.
- They will be balanced if they are equal, implying that the knowledge to be discovered equals zero.
- When balanced, no further knowledge is needed; when imbalanced, knowledge acquisition is required.
- The gap H between required and prior knowledge is the Knowledge to Be Discovered.
Prior knowledge is the easiest and the fastest to discover - it is in the human head, one just applies it. In other words, when prior knowledge is applied then there is the most efficient knowledge discovery. Conversely, when a lot of knowledge is missing then the knowledge discovery is less efficient. The more prior knowledge was applied i.e. the less knowledge was missing the more efficient a project is.
What is the maximum Project Skills Readiness Level value?
The math underlying Project Skills Readiness Level dictates that the minimum Project Skills Readiness Level value is 0 and the maximum value is 100.
How is Project Skills Readiness Level calculated?
In order to calculate Project Skills Readiness Level for software developers we use the Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety theorem:
where:
- Complexity of the system at scale n.
- Complexity of the environment (role) at scale n.
- Achievable variety in system outcomes at scale n.
Thus, Ashby’s Law in a multi-scale framework means that:
and if at any scale
References
1. W Ross Ashby. An Introduction to Cybernetics. Chapman & Hall Ltd, 1961.
2. Ashby, W. R. (2011). Variety, Constraint, And The Law Of Requisite Variety. 13, 18.
3. Siegenfeld, A.F.; Bar-Yam, Y. A Formal Definition of Scale-dependent Complexity and the Multi-scale Law of Requisite Variety.
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