Why Weight a Competency Model at All
Most competency models fail the same way - everything matters equally, so nothing does. The case for a two-level weighting system, and a first look at the two mirrored frameworks this series unpacks.
Series
Measuring the Developer
In reading order.
- 12 parts
- ≈ 102 min total
- 12 published
Engineering Craft and Its Nine Sub-Disciplines
Engineering Craft carries 25 of the framework's 100 points and splits into nine sub-disciplines - why writing code earns only 18 of them, why architecture is the most leveraged skill in the model, and why reading code overtakes writing it by the time seniority arrives.
Delivery Is a Discipline, Not a Date
Delivery carries 18 points in the framework and none of them is a deadline - incremental value, work breakdown, prioritisation and ambiguity as four trainable skills that turn engineering capability into shipped outcomes.
The Human Disciplines — Feedback and Collaboration
Feedback weighs 13 and Collaboration weighs 12 - together they match Engineering Craft point for point, and this part defends that arithmetic sub-discipline by sub-discipline, from effective communication to handling disagreement.
Leading Without the Title
Leadership weighs 15 in my competency framework and not one point of it requires authority - decision making, alignment, mentoring, process thinking and facilitation as evidenced skills, plus the two quiet disciplines that complete the model.
Five Levels and Observable Evidence
Novice to Architect - the five-level ladder both of my frameworks share, why every cell of it demands evidence you can point at rather than a feeling about ability, and the Level 0 my own summary tables invented by mistake.
Your Self-Assessment Is Lying to You
Two research results explain why self-ratings drift - METR's randomised trial of AI-assisted developers and Kruger and Dunning's calibration studies - plus the evidence fields, peer calibration notes and built-in warnings my templates use to correct for both.
Seven Disciplines Become Eight
The transformation map between my two frameworks - what each of the seven traditional disciplines became among the AI-era eight, what split, what transferred with its weight intact, what dissolved into sub-disciplines, and the fifth learning-stack discipline that is deliberately not on the list.
Why Specification Weighs 22 and Prompt Craft 8
The four core disciplines of my AI engineering framework and the argument behind their weights - why the prompt sits at the bottom of the stack at 8 points, why the specification sits at the apex at 22, and the sentence in my own document that its own table contradicts.
The Supporting Disciplines
The four disciplines that operate across my AI competency stack rather than inside it - agent architecture, evaluation, governance and domain translation - and why 37 of the framework's 100 points live outside the core.
Weighted Planning and the 90-Day Loop
How the framework becomes a form and the form becomes a plan - per-sub-discipline ratings with evidence, a 500-point ceiling, a gap-times-weight priority formula and a 90-day goal loop, walked through with a worked example.
What a Scorecard Cannot See
The honest retrospective on two weighted competency frameworks - the blank templates at their centre, the qualities no weight can hold, the situations where a weighted model is the wrong tool, and what I would build differently.