This article describes Smart Skills as administrators and team managers use them. If you are a team member, see Smart Skills for Team Members. Smart Skills are available in enterprise accounts.

This article contains the following sections:

• What are Smart Skills
• How are Smart Skills Different from Skills
• Where to Find Smart Skill Results
• How to Create Smart Skills
• What's Next?

What are Smart Skills

Smart Skills represent technology competencies that your team members need for their job.

Smart Skills are a special kind of skill for the Skills Readiness Solution. When you create a Career Path, you can use Smart Skills. You use the stars in the matrix to indicate what score a member needs in each Smart Skill for each Job Role in the Career Path.

However, appearing in a Career Path alone does not make a skill "smart," since you can also include skills that are not Smart Skills in a Career Path. To be considered a Smart Skill, the skill must meet the following criteria:

• It is assessable with Smart Assessments, and
• It can be trained with a skills-driven Training for a Job Role Program

Since a Smart Assessment is required for a Smart Skill, and since you cannot create custom Smart Assessments in Content Engine at this time, you also cannot create custom Smart Skills at this time.

When you assign a skills-driven Training for a Job Role program, the platform suggests training content that teaches the Smart Skills on the Career Path. Your team members complete a Smart Assessment for each Smart Skill to determine their baseline knowledge, and the platform places the member in the Program at the appropriate point based on the Smart Assessment results.

For example, in the screenshot above, the Career Path requires:

• JavaScript Core Programming
• JavaScript Functional Programming
• JavaScript Object Oriented Programming

When you assign a Training for a Job Role Program, the platform suggests training content related to these three Smart Skills. The team members with this Job Role complete Smart Assessments for each of the three skills.

A hypothetical team member with the Mid JavaScript Developer role, Lee, scores 2 stars in all three skills. The platform suggests that Lee skip the JavaScript Core Programming content designed for people who scored 0 or 1 star, and instead jump directly to the point in the training content that's designed to take a person from 2 stars to 3 stars.

The platform suggests that Lee skip all of the training content related to JavaScript Functional Programming and JavaScript Object Oriented Programming, since Lee has already achieved the goal number of stars for the Job Role.

Note: Each Smart Skill has exactly one Smart Assessment or Smart Lab. You cannot find these Smart Assessments or Smart Labs in the training library; the platform assigns them to team members a part of a skills-driven Program. Other assessment tools, like quizzes, exams, and lab challenges do not measure Smart Skills. 

Once team members complete the Program, they can re-take the Smart Assessment. If they achieved the goal number of stars, then they have completed the Program. If they have not achieved the goal, the platform suggests they start the training content again at the point determined by their results on the Smart Assessment.

How are Smart Skills Different from Skills

If you are a long-time QA user, you know that the concept of "skills" is central to the platform. Skills make up a sophisticated and comprehensive hierarchy of technology competencies, and many features depend on them.

The Skills Readiness Solution requires a different approach to assessing and training skills, so Smart Skills were created. Skills and Smart Skills co-exist, side-by-side, in the platform. Skills continue to work with existing feature, such as the following: 

• Skill Profile and Skill Profile Dashboard
• Exams
• Quizzes
• Lab challenges
• Tagging custom content with delivered or custom skills in Content Engine 

Meanwhile, the new Smart Skills drive the Skills Readiness Platform tools:

• Career paths and job roles
• Programs
• Smart Assessments

Note: Smart Skills cannot be used as tags in custom training materials you create in Content Engine at this time.

Where to Find Smart Skill Results

Robust tools for reviewing each team member's Smart Skill competency level are currently in development. For this first phase, however, you can find your members' current Smart Skill competency level on the skills-driven Training for a Job Role Program you assign.

Team members can see their own Smart Skill results on their personal Skill Profile.

How to Create Smart Skills

It is possible to create custom skills as part of the process of creating a Career Path. However, the skills you create at this time cannot be "smart" the way Smart Skills are.

Only Smart Assessments can measure Smart Skills, and Content Engine does not yet support creating custom Smart Assessments. Therefore, the Smart Skills you create on a job role cannot be measured. 

Also, Content Engine does not support tagging custom training content with custom Smart Skills. Therefore, the platform cannot automatically suggest training content related to a custom Smart Skill.

Still, if you do not find the Smart Skills you need while you are creating your career path, you can create the skill names as a placeholder. This information will help us understand whether there is a need for custom Smart Skills and which Smart Skills you think are missing.

What's Next?

If you have any problems or questions about Smart Skills, we're happy to help! Contact your CSM or platformsupport@qa.com.