Drupal skill sets: Give your feedback!

Do you think your Drupal related skills/competence can be described by the skill sets?

Partially, but definitely not entirely.

Are you hiring Drupal talent? Do these skill sets capture what you're looking for?

Not entirely. I think the "Advanced site building" skill set is a bit of a rabbit's hole.

Are you developing your Drupal skills? Do you think these skill sets would help you find skills to focus on?

For me, no. For others, probably.

Do you feel that any skill or competence is missing?

A couple that stand out are:

1. Evaluating contrib modules.
2. Knowing the best way to do something in Drupal - or knowing what questions and who to ask (this is a black art!)

Are any particular skills sets confusing?

Just the previously mentioned "advanced site building" - I think it is too broad.

Do you think trying to describe Drupal skills and competence like this would be useful for yourself or Drupal people you know?

Yes, but we'll have to be happy with the 80/20 rule. Once 80% of people agree with it, there will be another 20% who don't.

Thanks for doing this - it is a very useful exercise!

Thanks,
-mike

1. Do you think your Drupal related skills/competence can be described by the skill sets?
   A large part of it, but not all.

2. Are you hiring Drupal talent? Do these skill sets capture what you're looking for?
   Yes. In terms of Drupal knowledge, yes, though there is so much more to hiring than Drupal skills. ;-)

3. Are you developing your Drupal skills? Do you think these skill sets would help you find skills to focus on?
   Not really pushing my Drupal skills much these days, though I do think this breaks it down well in terms of areas I could focus on.

4. Do you feel that any skill or competence is missing?
   As mentioned above: documentation and training. Not Drupal-specific skills (so grey).

5. Are the titles or descriptions of any particular skill sets below confusing?
   No, no to me at least. Too hard for me to tell if it would be confusing for someone who is relatively new to Drupal.

6. Do you think trying to describe Drupal skills and competence like this would be useful for yourself or Drupal people you know?
   I definitely think that this is useful, especially for people who are new to Drupal, or are new to whole new skill areas (e.g. a themer who wants to get into module dev and deployment stuff). Having a common vocabulary in this space would be a big help, even if it isn't all neat and tidy, and while, like Mike says, there will always be some people who disagree with the specifics, there is enough stuff that will fit in that it would be a huge step forward in helping people not feel so overwhelmed by all of the info they want to shove in their heads. It will also help people communicate with each other about expectations a little more cleanly (e.g. employee/employer).

Kudos!

for advanced site building it lists multilingual site building. this is good, but maybe we should indicate that there is a lot of specific knowledge that one can learn within advanced site building, mostly related to certain modules like fields, views, rules, ....

1- Do you think your Drupal related skills/competence can be described by the skill sets?

I'd say it's missing a couple of skills that are business oriented, such as understanding Drupal's Core Architecture and understanding key core modules, and I also think there's a bit missing from the PM side of things.

2- Are you hiring Drupal talent?

Always.

Do these skill sets capture what you're looking for?

For developers whom are already Drupal devs, yes, but that's only one half of whom we hire (the other half have been really smart and motivated people whom we teach to become Drupal Devs).

3- Are you developing your Drupal skills? Do you think these skill sets would help you find skills to focus on?

Always. No, but that's just because I've been around for a while (using since 04, working with since 05).

4- Do you feel that any skill or competence is missing?

I mentioned it above.

5- Are the titles or descriptions of any particular skill sets below confusing?

No.

6- Do you think trying to describe Drupal skills and competence like this would be useful for yourself or Drupal people you know?

I don't know, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

I don't see any mention of documentation and writing skills.

Those READMEs, screencasts, and tutorials have to come from somewhere...

Hi!

Awesome work developing this chart!

A couple of comments that popped out of my mind

• Why is code contrib for major projects in a different branch and "less advanced" than Advanced Drupal coding skills?
• I would deattach completely the "systems guy" from the development branch, I know a some really brilliant systems people that can do performance reviews and improvements in Drupal sites without knowing anything about the drupal API.
• There's a huge gap between doing "Active community contribution" as you describe and i.e contributing to core.

Q Do you think your Drupal related skills/competence can be described by the skill sets?

Yes. But also yes to Alex's answer above, on which I say more below.

Q Are you hiring Drupal talent? Do these skill sets capture what you're looking for?

No. I work alone or with another developer. What I need is not to hire more Drupal skills (though having the contracts to justify that would be nice), I need someone with better graphic design skills (and good customer-facing skills) to work with.

Q Are you developing your Drupal skills? Do you think these skill sets would help you find skills to focus on?

If you are using Drupal you are developing skills all the time. Knowing what to focus on has emerged as problems need to be solved, and by attending Drupal conferences /meetups etc. The list is fairly obvious, but a good one-on-one trainer could accelarate and guide skill development.

Q Do you feel that any skill or competence is missing?

See my longer comment at the end of this post.

Q Are the titles or descriptions of any particular skill sets below confusing?

No.

Q Do you think trying to describe Drupal skills and competence like this would be useful for yourself or Drupal people you know?

It is a good start, with the following proviso. I have been building Drupal sites for almost two years, including fairly large complex sites, but mainly as a hobby. I would like to do so a bit more commercially. I can remember what it is like learning up to where I am now, what I call first half of intermediate level. There is something important missing in the OP questions. Drupalistas tend to forget it (but Alex got it in his post). If I were teaching I would be guiding students to get the basic Drupal concepts, the basic architecture of core and the large, major modules. Everything else builds on this foundation. Drupal is not just a big boy's Wordpress: it is a framework where there are often various solutions to a problem, and you are more likely to find a good, if not the best, solution with a good grasp of Drupal's style, structure and thinking. Teaching or learning PHP, the APIs, server setup, even HTML and CSS (which is only barely mentioned the list, probably because website makers forget they had to learn it once), all these are secondary. Unless you understand how Drupal is structured at a basic level, you can be very lost in Drupal, with or without the other skills.

There has been a lot of good feedback on the skill set map! Here is a summary of the feedback posted in this feedback thread, over at the original discussion, plus some extra thoughts I had while compiling the feedback list.

Suggested new skill sets

Completely new skill sets

• Training and writing documentation: This includes skills like tutorials, end-user documentation, skills to explains Drupal to others, training site editors. Training and documentation has been suggested by several people. Something worth discussing is whether this should be treated as one skill set or several skill sets; if it should be treated as a Drupal specific skill set or not; and if it should be a part of existing skill sets (i.e. "config. export" has a skill sub set "teaching/documenting config. export").
• Advanced content construction: This includes skills like using Context, Panels, Simple Views, Skinr, etc. These are advanced site editor skills, bordering to site builder skills.
• Managing a multi-site network: Making web sites/services talk to each other, this includes topics like Services, REST, etc. This has been suggested by more than one.
• Managing multi-site architecture: In contrast to "multi-site networks", this is strictly multi-site Drupal installations. (This could possibly also include similar "parallel site" solutions, such as Domain Access or Organic Groups.)
• Drush: Being an important Drupal tool, Drush should at least be an explicit part of an existing skill set – if not a skill set of its own.
• Mobile: This skill set has been suggested by several, but there are still problems with describing included skills.
• Understanding Drupal's core architecture.
• Understanding key core modules.
• Knowing when to hack core & contrib modules.
• Project manager skills in general were requested. (And yes, there are largely missing from the current map, since it focuses on Drupal-specific skill sets.) What Drupal-specific project manager skills are there?

Skill sets possibly overlapping with existing skill sets

• Docuement code: This is currently a part of "basic coding skills", but could be a skill set of its own.
• Front end performance: This is probably a part of "front-end engineering", but I think that skill set could/should be broken up into more distinct parts.
• JavaScript, AHAH, etc: These are parts of "basic theming skills" and "PHP coding for theming purposes", both of which could/should probably be better described.
• Evaluating contrib modules: This is currently a part of "basic site building", but could be a skill set of its own.
• Knowing what questions to ask and who to ask: I'm not sure that this suggestion was intended for a new skill set, but I think it's an excellent description of something that should be a part of Drupal community skills.

Other comments

• We should have different levels, or something corresponding to that, for all skill sets.
• There should be descriptions on a higher level – for a non-initiated the difference between "Site maintenance", "Simple site configuration" and "content management" is difficult to see
• "Basic site building" is too general.
• "Advanced site building" is a rabbit's hole. This has been commented on by several people.
• "Coding for major contrib" and "advanced Drupal coding skills" should be closer to each other.
• The system skills could be completely detached from the development branch.
• There should be an easier way to update the chart.
• There is a big gap between active community contribution and i.e. contributing to core.
• The chart is obviously more useful for new Drupalistas – or someone new to a particular "branch" of skill sets. It might be a point in making it explicit that once you have advanced far enough in the skill set tree, it is no longer a good tool for neither describe your full skills nor to guide further learning.

What now?

The feedback will be discussed a bit more, and then incorporated into an updated skill set map. Please join the main discussion if you're interested in following up!

Do you think your Drupal related skills/competence can be described by the skill sets?
Yes, almost.
Are you hiring Drupal talent? Do these skill sets capture what you're looking for?
No, not right now.
Are you developing your Drupal skills? Do you think these skill sets would help you find skills to focus on?
Yes ofcourse
Do you feel that any skill or competence is missing?
Documentation.
Are the titles or descriptions of any particular skill sets below confusing?
No
Do you think trying to describe Drupal skills and competence like this would be useful for yourself or Drupal people you know?
Defenitely Yes