Responsibilities

A Responsibility is a core trait that a Developer would be expected competently demonstrate in order to advance.

Each new level progressively adds to and expands upon the responsibility, requiring real progression and effort to advance. We mostly assume that progression is additive - so someone demonstrating qualities of a higher level will also be demonstrating the qualities required of lower levels. In some cases the requirements for an advanced level may contradict or supersede previous levels, we would assume in these cases that the Developer could, if need be, still fulfil lower requirements if necessary.

Not all responsibilities are applicable at all levels, in fact very few progress simply from one to seven. In cases where a responsibility begins later than level one that means that we do not expect a Developer to be consistently demonstrating these values until they are broadly at the starting level. So for a Developer who mostly around level 2 we would not be measuring them or pushing them to develop leadership skills just yet.

There are many instances where a responsibility stops progressing before level seven; this does not mean that we drop the responsibility and no longer demonstrate it, instead it simply means that we don’t expect to see any further major advancement. As an example the Supervision responsibility stops at level 5 by which point a Developer will be mostly unsupervised and able to work independently as needed; we don’t expect any further progression beyond that, they may well progress further and become 100% independent (at which point we’d probably need to have words with them) but we wouldn’t require this from them.

In a few places a responsibility will span several levels, this either means we’re not expecting to see any appreciable leaps in that area, (or we’ve not been able to define the responsibility well enough to include notes on progression).