Software Engineering Institute

Workforce effectiveness relies on two critical characteristics: competence and readiness. Competence is the sufficient mastery of the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform a given task. It reflects how well an individual understands subject matter or is able to apply a given skill. Readiness is the ability to apply the total set of competencies required to perform a job task in a real-world environment with acceptable proficiency. A readiness test assesses an individual’s ability to apply a group of technical and core competencies needed to perform and excel at a job task. This report describes research into workforce readiness conducted by the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) Development and Training team in the CERT® Division of Carnegie Mellon® University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI). This report presents the Competency Lifecycle Roadmap (CLR), a conceptual framework for establishing and maintaining workforce readiness within an organization. It also describes the readiness test development method, which defines a structured, systematic approach for constructing and piloting readiness tests. Finally, the report illustrates the initial application of the readiness test development method to the role of forensic analyst.