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The roll model

The roll model

In the IT industry, we are increasingly talking about role-based organisational structures. Accordingly, the actual profession is taking a back seat and the role is coming to the fore. The model underlying the roles of ICT therefore focuses on the role.

Here we describe all elements of the model that are relevant to the work Roles of ICT. For the sake of completeness, we have included additional elements so that generally applicable business conditions can be identified. This serves as an aid to embedding the roles correctly. The following elements can be found in the model but are not discussed further in the role descriptions as they are specific to the company:

- Employment. Every person in a company has a job, regardless of how many roles they ultimately perform in their work for the company. Employment usually involves an employment contract with the associated terms and conditions of employment. Some companies assign several roles to a single function that forms the basis of the employment. SBB, for example, subsumes various roles under the function of BizDevOps Engineer. This means that there is only one job for all roles in this function. Example: A person in the role of Application Engineer or Business Analyst is hired as a BizDevOps Engineer.
- Function. Companies sometimes distinguish between function and role. This is usually the case when there are several roles for one function. See the example from SBB. In companies where this distinction is not necessary, the function is equivalent to the role.
- Job description. In addition to their employment contract, every person in a company receives a job description. This is specific to the company and is derived from the framework conditions of the role to be performed: tasks, authority, responsibility – classic TCR (tasks, competencies, responsibility).
- Salary or fee. The employment contract determines the salary or, in the case of freelancers, the fee. We refer you to the salary and fee studies conducted by swissICT.
- Authority. A person has various authorities based on their role. These are company–specific and derive from organisational governance.
- Responsibility. Tasks entail certain responsibilities. These are company–specific. We focus on formulating tasks and leave it to companies to derive responsibilities.

The elements salary, fee and level are linked to the position. This is a broad generalisation. These elements may also be linked to the function or role. This also varies from company to company, especially if no distinction is made between function and role. In the ICT roles document, we distinguish between tasks, competencies and their competency level for each level. This means that in our document, the level is linked to the role.

The Model

In the ICT roles work, roles are always described according to the same scheme. This scheme is shown in the model and described here.

Rol
At the centre of the model is the role, which is described by various interlinked elements. Each role has
- a designation in German and English
- a brief description (concise summary of the main tasks)
- synonymous designations
- a role number
- a level: S1 – S5 / M1 – M4
- a description of the tasks
- training
- competence and competence level
Level
The level of a role is determined by the underlying competencies and their competency levels. We distinguish between levels S1 to S5 and M1 to M4. The names of the levels are specific to each company. A well-known naming pattern that has been used in this work for a long time is:
- S1: Junior
- S2: Professional
- S3: Senior
- S4: Expert
- S5: Senior Expert
- M1: Lower management
- M2: Middle management
- M3: Senior management
- M4: Top management
In this document, we have only specified the levels that appear in sufficient numbers in the swissICT salary survey.
Aufgabe
The tasks of a role are divided into technical tasks and tasks involving social interaction. We make this distinction to emphasise that in ICT, nothing works without teamwork and all roles involve interaction with other people – usually on an interdisciplinary basis.
These tasks have at least one responsibility, which is therefore also assigned to the role. The responsibility determines which tasks must be performed within the role. Responsibilities are specific to each company and are not defined further here.
Kompetenz und Kompetenzstufe
The performance of a role requires specific personal, technical and methodological as well as business and job–related competencies. The ICT Roles work uses one and the same competency model for roles. It only distinguishes between competency levels. These competency levels determine how well a competency is mastered and thus directly influence how effectively someone can perform in the respective role.

Explanations: Roles in AI and other specific features

Driven by technological change and evolving organisational structures, new roles are constantly emerging. We monitor the market closely and include roles in the catalogue that become established over time. To this end, we periodically analyse various sources, such as the job advertisement market. We often find that new roles are similar to existing ones. In such cases, we deliberately refrain from providing a dedicated description but include them in the synonym catalogue.

The roles presented in the work therefore describe generic IT roles with their typical tasks, competencies and responsibilities, but without technical or technological specifications. Such differentiation would, on the one hand, increase the scope too greatly and, on the other hand, only partially account for the rapid evolution of technologies and methods. The descriptions are therefore intended as general role definitions which can be adapted and supplemented in a manner specific to the organisation or department when used.

The roll model

The roll model

The Model

Rol

Level

Aufgabe

Kompetenz und Kompetenzstufe

Explanations: Roles in AI and other specific features