SFIAplus is the IT training and development model of the

British Computer Society Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in infor ...

(BCS). Based on the original Industry Structure Model, first published by the BCS in July 1986, which was remapped to the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) and rebranded as SFIAPlus.

Background

Responding to the wide recognition of the importance of an externally accredited professional development scheme, the BCS consulted with hundreds of contributors developing SFIAPlus to enable individuals and organisations to: * Understand the broad range of

ICT ICT may refer to: Sciences and technology * Information and communications technology * Image Constraint Token, in video processing * Immunochromatographic test, a rapid immunoassay used to detect diseases such as anthrax * In-circuit test, in ...

practitioner roles and activities * Research the experience, training and development required in those roles * Benchmark IT skills against the framework * Describe IT skills in a common language and a logical structure SFIAPlus is used by a large number of organisations, including many major companies, to apply quality control to the practical experience and training of ICT practitioners, and is widely used outside the UK, forming the basis of the European Informatics Skills Structure used throughout Europe.

SFIAPlus tools

While the first version in 1986 (of the ''Industry Structure Model'') was produced as a paper publication, the complexity in SFIAPlus mean that it is best accessed using a software interface (BCS describe it as three-dimensional as compared to the SFIA two-dimensional model). SFIAPlus can be browsed to access the full range of ICT competencies and tasks, and there are a number of additional tools: ; BCS Career Builder : Individual tool for self-planning for career and professional development ; IT Job Describer : Corporate tool for generating job descriptions using the SFIAPlus model ; Skills Manager : Corporate tool for managing skills within an organisation against the SFIAPlus model ; Career Developer : Corporate tool for planning the development of IT competencies against the SFIAPlus model''No need to firefight on skills'', article from Computer Weekly
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Structure

While SFIA maps IT competencies in two dimensions (skill categories and seniority) and briefly describes the 263 tasks expected of a role in each of the 78 categories at the relevant level of seniority; SFIAPlus extends this with additional categories, making 86 specific skills and 290 tasks; adding a more thorough overview of each competency (with eight skill resources); and providing significant detail behind each task description (six task components). Task descriptions in SFIAPlus are supplemented by: * Background * Work activities * Knowledge and skills * Training activities * Professional development activities * Qualifications

References

External links

SFIAPlus, on the BCS website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sfiaplus British Computer Society Information technology management