This document was made as we began to grow our Education team at Heap. We needed to identify the different promotion paths and needed skillsets. It helped to create a clear blueprint for all members of the team to know what areas of growth they should focus on.

Make sure that each level is distinct. Changing a single adjective across each level isn't helpful. Eg; Could anyone actually tell you the difference between basic mastery, deep mastery, and expert-level mastery of a product?

We started with this exercise before we wrote the descriptions to determine how skilled in each area each level should be. It helped us to understand what basic skills folks should come in with, and where we were okay with them growing over time.

In previous versions of this document, we had almost 15 unique skills, such as adaptability, coaching and mentorship, use case mastery, etc.

However, we found that this did a few things.
1. It made it seem really overwhelming to the team. They felt as though they had to be perfect in 15 areas in order to be considered for promotion.
2. It made coaching difficult because it was hard to identify a single focus area for a team member, especially when many of the areas had overlaps.

Once we realized this, we took another look at the skills, combined them where we could and then made it a point to prioritize what we felt the most important skills were.

Someone coming into an Associate Trainer role needed to have good communication skills and needed to focus on building pretty good product proficiency as they were onboarded in order to be able to perform their daily work.

Someone who had just moved into an L5 trainer role would be able to see that they really needed to be focusing on Project Leadership and Strategic Thinking if they hoped to move into an L6 role in the future.

We simplified this over time and removed skills to make it as usable as possible. If we had a skill that had at most a 3 skill level even in the more senior roles, then it probably didn't need to be listed in the matrix.

This artifact has gone through countless iterations and always will. We treat it as a living document as our program and company evolves. Initially, I don't think that we treated it as such, and it became stagnant.

In each performance review cycle (2x year), we make it a point to gather feedback from the team and managers to understand where this document can be improved. Is there confusion on the difference between 2 levels? Are the examples of what this looks like in practice clear and relevant? Has the team felt that this matrix is a good guide for focusing their development? Has the role changed in any ways that haven't been included here? Have the managers found that it is a good tool for actually assessing someone's readiness for promotion?

As we get that feedback, we take action items for areas that need to be updated and assign them to someone to update within the next sprint or two.

If possible, ensure that you are giving clear examples of what the actual output of work looks like.

Christy Hollingshead

This leveling matrix for the Customer Education team at Heap helps identify the needed skillsets at different levels. It makes it clear to the team the skill requirements of their role and the growth areas for promotion.

Customer Education Leveling Guide

Skillset Overview

Education Leveling Descriptions

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