What results from assigning a task to someone hardly qualified for it? It leads to time wastage, inefficiency, and unproductivity. The results are mostly unsatisfactory in companies where task assignments are based on roles and team rather than expertise.
Possessing subject matter expertise should be the sole criteria while selecting an employee for a particular assignment. However, that is only possible when managers have a knowledge map to find the appropriate person for a specific job.
One way of doing this is using the Skills for Jira organization knowledge map, a system that enables everyone in an organization to identify the SME or decision maker. It helps in workflow optimization, enhances productivity, and is indispensable for project planning.
How does it help one do this, the benefits, and other things one should know about this incredible tool? Read on to find out.
Why is it vital to have a knowledge map?
Why is having a knowledge map essential for project management? Isn’t there a way to identify the subject matter experts without using a tool or software, with only human intervention?
The answer lies in the size of an organization and the number of employees working in it. For example, suppose a company works with less than 50 people. In that case, it is easy to assign tasks depending on the individual’s skills (provided the company is thoroughly acquainted with those and assigns tasks based on their skills rather than roles).
However, project management can become challenging when your organization has more than 100 employees. You will have to spend hours trying to find the suitable candidate for the job, ensure they have the required skills, and then assign them the task.
All that takes a lot of time and is an inefficient way of doing things. A much better and more efficient way is using a tool like Skills for Jira that enables you to find the SME quickly.
Using a skill graph, you can find out who has previously worked on a project and is sufficiently acquainted with the technology required to complete the task.
What is a skill graph?
A skill graph is a systematically organized set of data that displays the relationships between skills and their interconnection. It helps you find the experts in a particular department, separates them into categories like levels, languages, and quality assurance, and further divides them into a specialized skill set.
Skills for Jira provides an extremely efficient skill graph that makes your job easy. You can use it to find experts with the required skills, explore skills and experts in your organization, and discover skills common between the users. You can even search for multiple skills or categories.
What are some of the benefits?
The knowledge graph reduces dependency on the manager, as everyone in the company can find colleagues with the required clearance for each task.
It prevents idle time between assignments, allows you to shuffle resources by changing the work queue configuration, and identifies missing, exclusive, or scarce skills in your organization.
It is also motivating for the employees since they receive tasks according to their area of expertise, which excites and motivates them.
Having an organization knowledge map makes your job of finding a subject matter expert (SME) easy. Skills for Jira provides you with expert finder tools like Skills Graph, enabling you to find the right skills for a job, thus increasing its chances of success and reducing unproductivity and idle time.