UK Call us: (0117) 3 321 231Section 1
How SFIA builds a role profile
SFIA, the Skills Framework for the Information Age, is a globally recognised framework that defines professional competencies across seven levels of responsibility, from Level 1 (Follow) through to Level 7 (Set strategy, inspire, mobilise). Each level reflects increasing autonomy, influence and complexity in the workplace; progression is not simply about seniority but about the nature of the decisions someone makes and the accountability they carry. Full details are available on the SFIA website.
A role profile in SFIA is not a job description. It is a structured combination of three distinct layers, each serving a different purpose:
Core professional skills
A small set of SFIA professional skills, typically six or seven, each defined at a specific level of responsibility. Skills are drawn from a shared library; the same skill can appear in multiple role profiles, at the same or different levels. What makes a profile distinctive is the particular combination of skills and the levels at which they are required.
Technologies & methods
A separate set of technologies and methods, rated on a four-point proficiency scale: Awareness (1), Working Knowledge (2), Proficient (3), Expert (4). This scale is independent of the seven SFIA skill levels; it describes what someone knows about a technology, not the level of responsibility at which they operate. A practitioner can be an Expert in Scrum while still operating at SFIA Level 3 overall.
Business skills & behavioural factors
Behavioural and interpersonal competencies drawn from the SFIA behaviours catalogue. SFIA identifies twelve generic attributes (including communication, collaboration, leadership, and problem-solving) that cut across all skills and levels. For agile roles, facilitation and coaching are particularly significant, and intentionally complement (rather than duplicate) the professional skills in Layer 1.
Section 2: Worked example
The Scrum Master: core skills
SFIA Level 4 descriptor
• Supports teams in adopting new practices, providing ongoing resources and guidance.
• Facilitates a safe environment for exploring challenges related to change.
• Assists with engagement sessions to secure leadership commitment, focusing on behavioural aspects.
• Addresses issues that arise during implementation, ensuring minimal disruption.
SFIA Level 4 descriptor
• Engages with stakeholders to understand requirements and recommends appropriate solutions.
• Provides advice and guidance to support the adoption of methods and tools and adherence to policies.
• Tailors processes to meet specific needs while aligning with established standards.
• Reviews and improves usage and application of methods and tools.
SFIA Level 4 descriptor
• Deals with problems and issues, managing resolutions, corrective actions and lessons learned.
• Implements stakeholder engagement and communications plans.
• Collects and uses feedback from customers and stakeholders to help measure effectiveness.
• Helps develop and enhance customer and stakeholder relationships.
SFIA Level 4 descriptor
• Facilitates a series of group activities or workshops in situations of complexity, ambiguity and competing stakeholder needs.
• Designs a structured sequence of meetings, events or workshops to solve complex problems.
• Understands required outcomes and facilitates the team to deliver these.
• Helps improve team processes and performance in meetings, events or workshops.
SFIA Level 3 descriptor
• Applies standard techniques to select, specify, collect and analyse data for measurement.
• Generates and distributes standard reports and dashboards on performance and progress.
• Uses measurement tools and techniques for routine reporting and analysis.
• Identifies and implements improvements to data collection methods.
SFIA Level 3 descriptor
• Delivers learning activities to various audiences using appropriate techniques.
• Engages and provides guidance to learners throughout the learning process.
• Observes learner performance, provides feedback and evaluates learning effectiveness.
• Adjusts delivery approaches to enhance the learning experience.
SFIA Level 4 descriptor
• Plans and manages the delivery of learning activities for multiple learner groups.
• Designs and adapts learning activities to meet the needs of diverse audiences.
• Evaluates the effectiveness of learning programmes and recommends improvements.
• Supports and coaches colleagues in the delivery of learning activities.
Section 3: Worked example
The Scrum Master: technologies & methods
These are rated on SFIA's separate four-point technology proficiency scale: Awareness (1), Working Knowledge (2), Proficient (3), Expert (4), which is independent of the seven skill levels above. It describes depth of knowledge, not level of workplace responsibility.
| Technology / Method | Proficiency | Context for the Scrum Master role |
|---|---|---|
| Scrum | 4: Expert | Deep working knowledge of the Scrum framework (events, artefacts, accountabilities) and the ability to apply, adapt and explain it in complex organisational contexts. |
| User Stories & Agile Requirements | 4: Expert | Expert understanding of user story structure, acceptance criteria, backlog management and refinement techniques, sufficient to coach teams and product owners effectively. See: Advanced User Story Writing. |
| XP Practices | 3: Proficient | Solid working knowledge of Extreme Programming practices, including continuous integration, test automation and pair programming, to support technically healthy Scrum teams. Covered in SAFe Agile Software Engineering (ASE). |
| Lean Practices | 3: Proficient | Proficient understanding of Lean thinking, waste reduction and flow; underpins retrospective analysis, process improvement and Kanban integration alongside Scrum. |
| Test Driven Development | 2: Working Knowledge | Sufficient awareness to understand TDD as a team practice, support its adoption, and have informed conversations with developers, without needing to practise it personally. Covered in SAFe Agile Software Engineering (ASE). See also: Advanced User Story Writing. |
Section 4: Worked example
The Scrum Master: business skills and behavioural factors
SFIA uses the term business skills and behavioural factors for what many frameworks call soft skills. These are generic attributes that apply across all professional skills and all levels; they describe how someone works, not what they know. SFIA defines twelve of them, and they form the third layer of any complete role profile. As SFIA itself puts it, these factors are about "the way you apply your skills and knowledge in the workplace."
The full set of twelve SFIA behavioural factors is listed below. For each, a brief description of its relevance to the Scrum Master role is noted where it applies, and the three that are most significant for the SM are highlighted.
| Behavioural factor | SM priority | Description and relevance to the Scrum Master |
|---|---|---|
| Communication | Relevant | Communicating clearly and appropriately across different audiences and contexts. For the SM, this means adapting the message for engineers, product owners, senior stakeholders and leadership, often within the same day. |
| Collaboration and teamwork | Relevant | Working effectively with others to achieve shared goals. The SM is, above all, a servant to collective outcomes; building genuine collaboration within the team and across organisational boundaries is central to the role. |
| Creativity and innovation | General | Generating new ideas and approaches. Relevant to retrospectives and continuous improvement, though less defining for the SM than for product or design roles. |
| Decision making | General | Making sound, timely decisions based on available information. The SM supports the team's decision-making rather than directing it, though impediment resolution demands clear judgement under pressure. |
| Digital mind-set | General | Embracing and understanding digital technologies and their potential. The SM needs sufficient awareness to have informed conversations with technical team members and to support tool adoption. |
| Leadership and management | Relevant | Influencing, motivating and guiding others. The SM leads without authority; the behavioural quality of servant leadership is what makes the professional skills in the role actually work in practice. |
| Learning and professional development | General | Continuously developing skills and knowledge. The SM who is not still learning is probably not doing the job properly, given how rapidly both the field and individual teams evolve. |
| Planning and organising | General | Structuring work to achieve goals efficiently. The SM does not own the sprint plan, but organising ceremonies, tracking impediments and managing the sprint cadence all require this quality. |
| Problem solving and analysis | Relevant | Identifying issues and finding workable solutions. Impediment removal is essentially applied problem solving; the SM who cannot think through root causes and options will not remove many impediments. |
| Adaptability | General | Responding constructively to change and uncertainty. Critical in the agile context, where team dynamics, priorities and organisational conditions shift continuously. |
| Improvement focus | General | Continually seeking to improve processes and outcomes. The retrospective is institutionalised improvement focus; the SM gives it structure and momentum. |
| Ethics, standards and professionalism | General | Acting with integrity and maintaining professional standards. The SM sets a behavioural example for the team; how they handle conflict, transparency and accountability shapes the team's norms. |
It is worth noting that Communication appears here as a behavioural factor and also has a counterpart in the core skills (OFCL for facilitation). This is intentional: OFCL describes the structured, professional practice of facilitation at a specific level of responsibility, while communication and collaboration as behavioural factors describe the broader interpersonal qualities that underpin how the SM operates day to day. Both are real, and both belong in a complete profile.
Section 5
How this maps to training
Once a SFIA profile is in place, the practical question for an L&D team is straightforward: which training addresses which skills? The table below shows which AgilityPro courses contribute to each element of the Scrum Master profile.
One important caveat: foundation-level courses such as CSM, PSM and SSM typically develop skills to Level 3 (Apply), meaning participants can apply the skill independently in straightforward situations. Progressing to Level 4 (Enable), where someone is advising others, adapting approaches to complex contexts, and taking accountability for outcomes across a team or workstream, generally requires the advanced courses and specialist modules also shown here. For skills where the Level 4 target matters, the advanced courses are not optional extras; they are the point.
| Profile element | Level 3 courses | Level 4 courses |
|---|---|---|
| Core professional skills | ||
| Organisational Change Enablement OCEN · Level 4 | Not addressed at L3 | |
| Methods and Tools METL · Level 4 | ||
| Stakeholder Relationship Management RLMT · Level 4 | ||
| Organisational Facilitation OFCL · Level 4 | ||
| Measurement MEAS · Level 3 | Target is L3 | |
| Learning Delivery ETDL · Levels 3–4 | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Technologies & methods (columns indicate courses that develop towards that proficiency level) | ||
| Scrum Expert (4) | ||
| User Stories & Agile Requirements Expert (4) | ||
| XP Practices Proficient (3) | Not addressed at this level | |
| Lean Practices Proficient (3) | ||
| Test Driven Development Working Knowledge (2) | Target is Working Knowledge (2) | |
We can build this for your organisation
If your L&D team uses SFIA, or is thinking about it, we can help you build role profiles for your agile functions and map them to a training commissioning plan. The Scrum Master is one example; the same approach works for Product Owners, RTEs, Agile Coaches and beyond.
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