Orig­i­nal source pub­li­ca­tion: de Moura, F. L. and F. de Sá-Soares (2022). Seman­tic and Syn­tac­tic Rules for the Spec­i­fi­ca­tion of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Com­pe­ten­cies. IADIS Inter­na­tional Jour­nal on Com­puter Sci­ence and Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems 17(1), 50–64.
The final pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able here.

Seman­tic and Syn­tac­tic Rules for the Spec­i­fi­ca­tion of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Com­pe­ten­cies

Fábio Longo de Moura and Fil­ipe de Sá-Soares

Cen­tro ALGO­RITMI, Uni­ver­sity of Minho, Guimarães, Por­tu­gal

1. Introduction

Address­ing the con­cept of com­pe­tency in sci­en­tific inves­ti­ga­tions has been increas­ingly chal­leng­ing, as it may be found by the num­ber of sci­en­tific pub­li­ca­tions that refer to this con­cept. With a pro­lif­er­a­tion of stud­ies on a topic, it might be expected that the more a con­cept is ref­er­enced, the greater the rigor in its use. How­ever, in what con­cerns com­pe­tency, this does not nec­es­sar­ily mean higher lev­els of matu­rity or stan­dard­iza­tion in the employ­ment of the con­cept. Indeed, Fer­rari [2012] notices the exis­tence of a “jar­gon jun­gle not easy to breach” (p. 11), Janssen et al. [2013] observe that “con­crete elab­o­ra­tions [of dig­i­tal com­pe­tence] vary depend­ing on the con­text and the par­tic­u­lar ‘lan­guage’ used,” (p. 473), and Ober­län­der et al. [2020] high­light the preva­lence of “many dif­fer­ent labels” (p. 4), fre­quently “used inter­change­ably, as syn­onyms, describ­ing the same con­cept”, but where “def­i­n­i­tions and intended mean­ings are rather impre­cise and depend on the con­text of use.” (p. 4).

This per­ceived lack of rigor when apply­ing the word “com­pe­tency” and other terms that are often treated as syn­onyms for com­pe­tency, such as skill, knowl­edge, abil­ity, and pro­fi­ciency, or that are closely related to com­pe­tency, such as pos­ture, behav­ior, dis­po­si­tion, and atti­tude, con­veyed the oppor­tu­nity for this work.

By study­ing sev­eral well-known Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy (IST) com­pe­tency-focused frame­works in the search for def­i­n­i­tions of com­pe­tency-related con­cepts, we found that dif­fer­ent con­cepts form the struc­ture of those frame­works. The lack of rigor when apply­ing the con­cepts related to the com­pe­ten­cies of indi­vid­u­als led us to resort to dic­tio­nar­ies, seek­ing pri­mary def­i­n­i­tions for the con­cepts. In an effort to obtain a uni­fied approach to the vari­ety of con­cepts addressed in this work, as well as to grasp bet­ter ways to for­mu­late (writ­ing) them, we advanced revised def­i­n­i­tions for the con­cepts, based on the reviewed lit­er­a­ture. This allowed us to struc­ture the con­struct of com­pe­tency in the realm of the IST pro­fes­sional area.

In this paper, we argue that one way to dis­tin­guish the attrib­utes char­ac­ter­iz­ing pro­fes­sion­als’ com­pe­ten­cies is the way of writ­ing the attrib­utes that com­pose the com­pe­tency con­struct. We advo­cate that the attrib­utes asso­ci­ated with job com­pe­ten­cies, such as expected actions from a pro­fes­sional, knowl­edge require­ments, indi­vid­u­als’ fea­tures, or even job-related objects, may have their writ­ing stan­dard­ized, and that this will assist in their clas­si­fi­ca­tion in one of the main con­cepts reviewed in this work. To this end, we pro­pose that Backus-Naur Form (BNF), a meta-syn­tax nota­tion, can be used to define cri­te­ria–a gram­mar–to gov­ern the writ­ing of con­cepts that com­pose the com­pe­tency con­struct. Thus, the research ques­tion that this work aims to answer is the fol­low­ing: Is a Backus-Naur Form com­pe­tency gram­mar able to assist in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, clas­si­fi­ca­tion and writ­ing of IST pro­fes­sional attrib­utes? Aim­ing to answer the research ques­tion, we turned to IST pro­fes­sion­als, ask­ing them to revisit their pro­fes­sional rou­tines and to use the BNF com­pe­tency gram­mar to map their respon­si­bil­i­ties in the work­place, i.e., all that is required to meet the daily demands of their job func­tions. After­wards, with the inten­tion of increas­ing the gen­er­al­iza­tion degree of the com­pe­tency gram­mar, we also engaged pro­fes­sion­als from four areas not related to IST.

We delin­eated the com­pe­tency-related con­cepts based on sev­eral com­pe­tency frame­works and grounded in def­i­n­i­tions found in dic­tio­nar­ies. In the next sec­tion of the paper, we sum­ma­rize the lit­er­a­ture review, briefly describ­ing the com­pe­tency frame­works, and iden­ti­fy­ing the dic­tio­nar­ies that pro­vided sup­port mate­r­ial for the def­i­n­i­tion of con­cepts. The main con­cepts are also pre­sented, with BNF being intro­duced as the nota­tion for spec­i­fy­ing the rules of writ­ing the instan­ti­a­tions of the con­cepts involved. After the lit­er­a­ture review, the sec­tion on com­pe­tency gram­mar sets forth the writ­ing rules for each of the reviewed con­cepts. Also in that sec­tion, we pro­pose a deci­sion tree to aid in the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of words or sen­tences related to the prac­tice of pro­fes­sion­als. Next, we describe ini­tial efforts to val­i­date the com­pe­tency gram­mar in use. In the final sec­tion, con­clu­sions, lim­i­ta­tions of the study and ideas for future work are pointed out.

2. Literature Review

The def­i­n­i­tion of the con­cepts was con­sid­ered a require­ment to start this work. In what con­cerns the com­pe­tency frame­works, it was noted that these ref­er­ences approach the con­cepts dif­fer­ently, result­ing in dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions for the same con­cept, as well as dif­fer­ent con­cepts with the same def­i­n­i­tion. This diver­gent approach to the con­cept of com­pe­tency com­pli­cates the estab­lish­ment of pro­fes­sional pro­files, which can lead com­pa­nies to expe­ri­ence addi­tional dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing the most suit­able pro­fes­sional for their demand. Seek­ing to strengthen the path lead­ing to the def­i­n­i­tion of con­cepts, it was also nec­es­sary to use dic­tio­nar­ies, since dic­tio­nary-based def­i­n­i­tions are, to a cer­tain extent, agnos­tic, i.e., they are not tied to or influ­enced by the spe­cific pur­poses or cen­tral themes under­ly­ing com­pe­tency frame­works.

The fol­low­ing sub­sec­tion addresses the eight com­pe­tency frame­works reviewed in this work (O*NET, ROME, e-CF, SFIA, iCD, MSIS2016, IS2020, and IT2017), pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the approach adopted in each frame­work to the con­cept of com­pe­tency and to the cen­tral theme that each frame­work focuses on.

2.1 Competency Frameworks

The O*NET frame­work is sup­ported by the United States Depart­ment of Labor [2020], receiv­ing con­stant updates. This frame­work has pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tion as its cen­tral theme, but it involves sev­eral other con­cepts that refer to char­ac­ter­is­tics and attrib­utes expected to be found in pro­fes­sion­als. Some com­ple­men­tary con­cepts are based on the RIASEC types (Real­is­tic, Inves­tiga­tive, Artis­tic, Social, Enter­pris­ing, and Con­ven­tional) pro­posed by Hol­land [1997]. The O*NET archi­tec­ture also inte­grates train­ing courses rec­om­mended for the occu­pa­tions cov­ered by the frame­work, point­ing out the level of train­ing nor­mally required for hir­ing pro­fes­sion­als. Con­cern­ing hir­ing, it also pro­vides infor­ma­tion regard­ing to wages, employ­ment trends, and job open­ings. This frame­work helps indi­vid­u­als to obtain infor­ma­tion about which career to pur­sue, the tools typ­i­cally used in the job, rou­tine tasks that the pro­fes­sional must per­form, as well as rou­tine sit­u­a­tions that a pro­fes­sional might face on a daily basis. O*NET has mapped 1016 pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tions, which are grouped into 16 groups. For each group, pos­si­ble career paths, the so-called Career Path­ways, are iden­ti­fied.

With sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics, there is the Réper­toire Opéra­tion­nel des Métiers et des Emplois (ROME) [ETA­LAB 2020], pro­vided by the French gov­ern­ment. This frame­work also uses the RIASEC types, but it con­strains the con­cept addressed to its cen­tral theme, namely occu­pa­tion. For the pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tion, the frame­work pro­poses how to enter the career, indi­cat­ing the nec­es­sary train­ing and con­di­tions for the exer­cise of the pro­fes­sion, hav­ing in mind the phys­i­cal and tech­ni­cal skills required by the occu­pa­tion. Basic com­pe­ten­cies and spe­cific com­pe­ten­cies for the occu­pa­tion are also mapped, in addi­tion to indi­ca­tion of sit­u­a­tions in the work envi­ron­ment and related occu­pa­tions, based on the pro­fes­sional attrib­utes in com­mon between occu­pa­tions and point­ing out what would be required for a career evo­lu­tion, enabling a pro­fes­sional to move to another occu­pa­tion. An addi­tional sim­i­lar­ity between ROME and O*NET con­cerns the group­ing of occu­pa­tions. In ROME there are 509 pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tions mapped, divided into 17 large groups. Both ROME and O*NET are over­ar­ch­ing frame­works, address­ing occu­pa­tions in man­i­fold pro­fes­sional areas, not just activ­i­ties within the IST prac­tice domain.

Assign­ing the con­cept of com­pe­tency as the cen­tral theme of the frame­work, the Euro­pean e-Com­pe­tence Frame­work (e-CF) [Euro­pean Union 2016], specif­i­cally aimed at the area of IST, sets forty-one dif­fer­ent com­pe­ten­cies. In addi­tion to these com­pe­ten­cies, the e-CF char­ac­ter­izes 30 illus­tra­tive pro­files that can be held by IST pro­fes­sion­als. Each pro­fes­sional, accord­ing to the frame­work, must have a dif­fer­ent group of com­pe­ten­cies, and for each com­pe­tency, there will be a demand that may vary, accord­ing to five dif­fer­ent lev­els of pro­fi­ciency. The frame­work struc­tures the com­pe­tency infor­ma­tion into four dimen­sions, with the first dimen­sion indi­cat­ing the macro process in which the com­pe­tency falls (Plan, Build, Run, Enable, or Man­age). The sec­ond dimen­sion indi­cates the skills required for the pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tion, and the third dimen­sion details, for each skill, the expected pro­fi­ciency lev­els, which may vary from level 1 to level 5. The detail­ing of the occu­pa­tion also sug­gests which are the expected deliv­er­ies for each occu­pa­tion, con­sid­er­ing three dif­fer­ent moments that the pro­fes­sional may expe­ri­ence in their occu­pa­tion, being Account­able, Respon­si­ble, or Con­trib­u­tor. There is also a sum­mary of the main tasks that a pro­fes­sional will have to per­form dur­ing his/her pro­fes­sional activ­ity and more gen­eral data, which relates to spe­cific infor­ma­tion with the required com­pe­tency and the exer­cise of the occu­pa­tion. It is worth men­tion­ing that the third dimen­sion of the frame­work is not lim­ited to the tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the occu­pa­tion, since it sug­gests which atti­tudes the pro­fes­sional should demon­strate when per­form­ing his/her pro­fes­sional attri­bu­tions. The fourth dimen­sion pro­vides a set of knowl­edge and skill items as exam­ple and basis for each com­pe­tency of e-CF. This frame­work gave rise to a Euro­pean stan­dard, iden­ti­fied as EN16234, high­light­ing the rel­e­vance of the knowl­edge accu­mu­lated over more than 10 years of work by pro­fes­sion­als in IST from dif­fer­ent regions of Europe.

Assum­ing skill as the cen­tral theme, there are the Skill Frame­work for the Infor­ma­tion Age (SFIA) [SFIA Foun­da­tion 2021] and the i-Com­pe­tence Dic­tio­nary (iCD) [Hayashiguchi et al. 2018], both spe­cific to the IST pro­fes­sional area. The sup­port pro­vided by SFIA is based on the map­ping of 121 skills, grouped into 19 sub­cat­e­gories and, then, into six cat­e­gories. Asso­ci­ated to each skill there are lev­els of respon­si­bil­ity, with each level embody­ing increased respon­si­bil­ity, account­abil­ity, and impact, which are divided into the fol­low­ing attrib­utes: auton­omy, influ­ence, com­plex­ity, busi­ness skills, and knowl­edge. It is through these attrib­utes that the skills are described, and it becomes pos­si­ble to define pro­fes­sional pro­files. The lev­els of respon­si­bil­ity are defined accord­ing to the skill. How­ever, some skills do not have attrib­utes defined right from level 1, but only from more high­est respon­si­bil­ity lev­els, sug­gest­ing that a pro­fes­sional with lim­ited expe­ri­ence would not qual­ify for exhibit­ing cer­tain skills. The lev­els of respon­si­bil­ity have a denom­i­na­tion that makes clear the expected per­for­mance of the pro­fes­sional at each level, which goes from 1 to 7, being, respec­tively: Fol­low, Assist, Apply, Enable, Ensure/Advise, Ini­ti­ate/Influ­ence, and Inspire/Mobilise. SFIA pro­vides a matrix that relates the lev­els of respon­si­bil­ity to the attrib­utes of each skill, mak­ing clear what is the tech­ni­cal capac­ity and expected behav­ior of pro­fes­sion­als in the IST domain.

The iCD, although hav­ing skill as its cen­tral theme, pro­poses a dif­fer­ent approach by list­ing the tasks asso­ci­ated with each indi­vid­ual skill. This frame­work includes 84 skill cat­e­gories, divided into 14 clas­si­fi­ca­tions and four cat­e­gories. In all, the cat­e­gories include 442 dif­fer­ent skills. There is also an inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship pro­posed by the iCD, which assigns, for each skill, a nec­es­sary set of knowl­edge items. The frame­work has mapped more than ten thou­sand and one hun­dred items, each one assigned to one or more skills. There is also the Job List and Job Cat­e­gory, which, like the knowl­edge items, are also related to the skills list. Regard­ing the pro­fi­ciency level defined for the skills, iCD also uses seven lev­els, which from level 1 to level 4 divide pro­fi­ciency char­ac­ter­is­tics between Tech­nol­ogy, Method­ol­ogy, and Related Knowl­edge. From level 5 onwards there is no divi­sion between the cat­e­gories, hav­ing only a descrip­tion for the pro­fi­ciency level. Con­sid­er­ing the iCD as a glos­sary of tasks and skills, the frame­work is qual­i­fied as a ref­er­ence in the assign­ment of respon­si­bil­i­ties, as it demon­strates which tasks and which skills have a strong rela­tion­ship, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to demon­strate how the pro­fes­sional can evolve, through the pro­fi­ciency lev­els.

Leav­ing the con­text of prac­ti­tion­ers and migrat­ing to the aca­d­e­mic con­text, three other com­pe­tency frame­works were explored, namely, IS2020 (cf. Lei­dig et al. [2021]) and MSIS2016 (cf. Topi et al. [2017]), pro­moted by the Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ing Machin­ery (ACM) and the Asso­ci­a­tion for Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (AIS), and IT2017, pro­moted by the ACM and the IEEE Com­puter Soci­ety (IEEE-CS). MSIS2016 defines itself as a Global Com­pe­tency Model for Grad­u­ate Degree Pro­grams in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. The model makes an overview of the Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems area, argu­ing that busi­ness is not the only domain where IST pro­fes­sion­als can apply their com­pe­ten­cies, sug­gest­ing dif­fer­ent paths for these pro­fes­sion­als, like health­care, gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, and law. MSIS2016 com­prises nine Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (IS) com­pe­tency areas, each one with their com­pe­tency cat­e­gories and, per se, hav­ing four dif­fer­ent lev­els of com­pe­tency cat­e­gory attain­ment, namely, Aware­ness, Novice, Sup­port­ing, and Inde­pen­dent. In total, there are 88 com­pe­tency cat­e­gories, and for each com­pe­tency cat­e­gory, the frame­work pro­vides exam­ples of what the grad­u­ates would be able to do.

IS2020 is a sim­i­lar frame­work to MSIS2016, but tar­get­ing under­grad­u­ate pro­grams in IS. The frame­work defines com­pe­tency as the com­bi­na­tion of knowl­edge (the know-what), skills (the know-how) and dis­po­si­tions (the know-why) in the con­text of per­form­ing a task. In order to express skills, IS2020 adopted Bloom’s Cog­ni­tive Lev­els as the basis for sug­gest­ing approaches to the appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge, namely, 1-Remem­ber­ing, 2-Under­stand­ing, 3-Apply­ing, 4-Ana­lyz­ing, 5-Eval­u­at­ing, and 6-Cre­at­ing. It also maps 11 dis­po­si­tions, con­cern­ing behav­ior. For each com­pe­tency, knowl­edge ele­ments are defined and clas­si­fied in terms of skill level (Bllom cog­ni­tive level), and the rec­om­mended key dis­po­si­tions asso­ci­ated to the com­pe­tency are indi­cated. In total, IS2020 pro­poses six com­pe­tency realms encom­pass­ing 19 com­pe­tency areas, which instan­ti­ate 178 com­pe­ten­cies that guide the design of under­grad­u­ate pro­grams in IS. The frame­work also artic­u­lates its com­pe­tency areas to those of MSIS2016, show­ing what com­pe­ten­cies defined in IS2020 will pre­pare indi­vid­u­als for mas­ter stud­ies in the domain of IS. An impor­tant aspect of IS2020 is that although they rec­og­nize that there is rea­son to link tasks to pro­fes­sional activ­i­ties, the authors did not pro­vide exam­ples of tasks. The frame­work fol­lows a more con­ser­v­a­tive approach, focus­ing on grad­u­ates’ com­pe­ten­cies that are acquired through stud­ies (cf. Lei­dig et al. [2021]).

The other frame­work related to the aca­d­e­mic con­text, IT2017 (cf. Sabin et al. [2017]), aims to pro­vide guide­lines for the design of higher-level courses (bach­e­lor’s) in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy (IT) It has a sim­i­lar struc­ture to that of IS2020, includ­ing the need to guide stu­dents so that they hold cer­tain behav­ior-level attrib­utes, which will enable them to apply tech­ni­cal-level attrib­utes. The frame­work addresses the main con­cepts of the IT area, empha­siz­ing under­grad­u­ate pro­grams in that area. IT2017 defends that com­pe­tency is the result of the sum of knowl­edge, skills and dis­po­si­tions, and IT com­pe­ten­cies are the sum of these items applied in a pro­fes­sional con­text. With a dif­fer­ent name, IT2017 sep­a­rates com­pe­ten­cies into groups of domains, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing them as essen­tial and sup­ple­men­tal. The essen­tial domain group is com­posed of 10 sub­groups, account­ing for 83 domains, while the sup­ple­men­tal domain group is com­posed of nine sub­groups, account­ing for 69 domains. Per­for­mance goals and pro­fes­sional prac­tice are cap­tured by a set of verbs clas­si­fied into the fol­low­ing six cat­e­gories: Explain, Inter­pret, Apply, Demon­strate Per­spec­tive, Show Empa­thy, and Have Self-Knowl­edge. Each domain has a scope, spe­cific com­pe­ten­cies, and related sub­do­mains.

In this work, eight com­pe­tency frame­works were ana­lyzed, each one com­posed by dif­fer­ent con­cepts that make up what the authors of the frame­works define as com­pe­tency. Through the pro­posal of a def­i­n­i­tion for the com­pe­tency con­struct and an asso­ci­ated set of rules for express­ing instances of the com­po­nent con­cepts (the gram­mar), we hope to increase the matu­rity and rigor with which these mat­ters are dealt with.

In the next sub­sec­tion, we present the main con­cepts in the afore­men­tioned frame­works and advance def­i­n­i­tions that will be use­ful for the stan­dard­iza­tion of the appli­ca­tion of those con­cepts within the scope of this study.

2.2 Main Concepts

Con­sid­er­ing that IST was the pri­mary focus of this work, in the begin­ning, we sought for con­cepts defined and applied specif­i­cally in IST, and the frame­works that ini­tially con­trib­uted to the study were e-CF and SFIA, and later iCD. Con­sid­er­ing the struc­ture of each frame­work, the def­i­n­i­tions for the con­cepts are con­trast­ing. When com­par­ing SFIA and e-CF, for exam­ple, a com­mon con­cept is that of skill, how­ever, its appli­ca­tion is dif­fer­ent. In e-CF, skill is one of the ele­ments that sup­port the exis­tence of a com­pe­tency, while in SFIA skill is related to a pro­fes­sional area. Also present as cen­tral to iCD, the con­cept of skill is referred as a group of expected func­tions that the pro­fes­sional per­forms. Although these frame­works, as men­tioned, per­tain to the area of IST, the results of the rela­tion­ship between these frame­works had some com­mon­al­i­ties with the struc­ture of broad non-spe­cific frame­works, such as O*NET and ROME.

Accord­ing to the e-CF def­i­n­i­tion, the com­pe­tency con­cept can be defined as a demon­strated abil­ity to apply knowl­edge, skills, and atti­tudes for achiev­ing observ­able results. In this def­i­n­i­tion, some con­cepts are pointed out that need spe­cial atten­tion, such as abil­ity, knowl­edge, skill, and atti­tude. The e-CF notes that com­pe­tency is a holis­tic con­cept, being related to work­place activ­i­ties, and incor­po­rat­ing behav­iors expressed as embed­ded atti­tudes.

In what con­cerns IT2017, IS2020, and MSIS2016, these doc­u­ments build on the con­cept of com­pe­tency, lay­ing out pro­fes­sional pro­files for the IST area, defin­ing skills, tasks, and lev­els of dif­fi­culty related to the func­tions per­formed by IT and IS pro­fes­sion­als.

Con­sult­ing dic­tio­nar­ies for the term com­pe­tency or com­pe­tence, the Oxford [2014] reg­is­ters “the abil­ity to do some­thing suc­cess­fully or effi­ciently”, very close to Collins’ entry “the abil­ity to do some­thing well or effec­tively” [Collins Dic­tio­nary 2017], but dif­fer­ent from Cam­bridge’s expla­na­tion as “an impor­tant skill that is needed to do a job” [Cam­bridge 2020] or APA’s def­i­n­i­tion of “one’s devel­oped reper­toire of skills, espe­cially as it is applied to a task or set of tasks” [APA Dic­tio­nary 2018]. From the com­pe­tency frame­works, groups of tasks are assigned to a com­pe­tency, which can be seg­re­gated into abil­i­ties, which cor­re­spond to dif­fer­ent lev­els of pro­fi­ciency. These lev­els of pro­fi­ciency involve a com­bi­na­tion of knowl­edge and skills that will enable the pro­fes­sional to per­form the tasks inher­ent to their abil­i­ties. The analy­sis of the IST frame­works also sug­gested that pro­fes­sional prac­tice, regard­less of the pos­ses­sion of abil­i­ties, is con­di­tioned to the pro­fes­sional’s pos­ture, which may be formed by the behav­ior and dis­po­si­tion ele­ments.

In this work, we con­sider that com­pe­tency has two pil­lars that sup­port it, namely abil­ity and pos­ture. A cer­tain abil­ity might be per­formed at dif­fer­ent lev­els of pro­fi­ciency, express­ing the com­plex­ity of the knowl­edge and skill asso­ci­ated with that par­tic­u­lar abil­ity. Since the com­bi­na­tion of knowl­edge and skills indi­cates a level of com­plex­ity for a given abil­ity, there is also the pos­si­bil­ity of mea­sur­ing the com­plex­ity to per­form a given task, mak­ing evi­dent the rel­e­vance of the abil­ity ele­ment in this com­pe­tency struc­ture. For each task, there may be a set of tools nec­es­sary for its exe­cu­tion. The other pil­lar that sup­ports com­pe­tency goes beyond tech­ni­cal fac­tors, address­ing per­sonal fac­tors, which are equally rel­e­vant to com­pe­tency. The pro­fes­sional’s pos­ture is some­thing that can be iden­ti­fied through attrib­utes and char­ac­ter­is­tics observed in the work envi­ron­ment, which are the dis­po­si­tions that, in turn, sup­port the occur­rence of cer­tain behav­iors by the pro­fes­sional and that enact his/her com­pe­tency. The def­i­n­i­tions pro­posed for the com­pe­tency con­struct and com­pe­tency-related con­cepts are now pre­sented, built upon IST and gen­eral com­pe­tency frame­works, as well as entries from dic­tio­nar­ies:

• Com­pe­tency: ¹It refers to a com­bi­na­tion of abil­i­ties and pos­tures at the indi­vid­ual level to solve a given task at a spe­cific time. ²It must be related to a pro­fes­sional area where indi­vid­u­als employ their abil­i­ties.

• Abil­ity: ¹It refers to the con­di­tion that indi­cates some­one can per­form a cer­tain task, hav­ing a degree of pro­fi­ciency in the use of resources, which at the indi­vid­ual level refers to the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and skills. ²It has great prox­im­ity to the def­i­n­i­tion of a posi­tion to be held by a pro­fes­sional.

• Pos­ture: ¹Clas­si­fier of the recur­rent behav­ior observed in the indi­vid­ual. ²It char­ac­ter­izes the moment when the indi­vid­ual responds to a stim­u­lus received, influ­enced by his/her dis­po­si­tion in the face of an event, which leads to the per­for­mance of spe­cific behav­iors.

• Dis­po­si­tion: ¹It refers to an incli­na­tion or ten­dency to favor an alter­na­tive over other(s), which results in one or more behav­iors, sup­port­ing an indi­vid­ual’s char­ac­ter­is­tic pos­ture. ²It specif­i­cally addresses incli­na­tions, indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences.

• Behav­ior: ¹It is what can be observed as the result of a stim­u­lus received by the indi­vid­ual, depend­ing on the envi­ron­ment in which he/she is located. ²It is influ­enced by the beliefs and expe­ri­ences that the indi­vid­ual has and con­trib­utes to the evo­lu­tion of knowl­edge at the indi­vid­ual level. ³It is the imme­di­ate response to a stim­u­lus.

• Task: ¹Some­thing that can be per­formed by the indi­vid­ual, in ful­fill­ing a demand or attend­ing to the solu­tion of a prob­lem, requir­ing the use of one or more abil­i­ties and one or more pos­tures for its full ful­fill­ment, as expected. It is pos­si­ble that, for its exe­cu­tion, it is nec­es­sary to use one or more tools. ²It is some­thing that can be ful­filled by employ­ing (pos­ture) the indi­vid­ual’s abil­i­ties.

• Tool: ¹Aux­il­iary tech­no­log­i­cal resource that can be used to accom­plish a given task. A tool can be involved in dif­fer­ent tasks, just as a task can demand dif­fer­ent tools for its exe­cu­tion. ²It is some­thing that can be mobi­lized dur­ing the employ­ment (pos­ture) or abil­ity as a sup­port for the com­ple­tion of a task.

• Pro­fi­ciency: ¹It indi­cates the level by which the indi­vid­ual is trained, con­sid­er­ing the resources pos­sessed (knowl­edge and skills) and the results that can be obtained when putting them into prac­tice (pos­ture). ²The pro­fi­ciency of an indi­vid­ual must indi­cate the result that he/she must deliver when act­ing pro­fes­sion­ally.

• Skill: ¹It is one of the ele­ments that make up the abil­ity of the indi­vid­ual and may be car­ried by the indi­vid­ual’s pos­ture (along with knowl­edge). ²It refers, in some sit­u­a­tions, to the appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge acquired, and in other sit­u­a­tions, it refers to the appli­ca­tion of nat­u­ral­knowl­edge, both intend­ing to solve some demand in the pro­fes­sional scope. ³Some skills sup­port the exe­cu­tion of other skills, that is, one skill may depend on another to be applied. It is impor­tant to empha­size that hav­ing skills is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for the pro­fes­sional to be able to per­form tasks.

• Knowl­edge: ¹It sus­tains the indi­vid­ual’s action in the exe­cu­tion of his/her skills or in the con­duct of the pro­fes­sional posi­tion he/she holds. ²It is what can be acquired through expe­ri­ence and study; thus, the sources of knowl­edge acqui­si­tion are the prac­tice of the indi­vid­ual’s abil­i­ties and the indi­vid­ual’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in train­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tion courses. ³It is con­sid­ered that knowl­edge is improved through its prac­tice (pos­ture), form­ing the begin­ning or basis of an abil­ity for­ma­tion process. ⁴There is knowl­edge that sup­ports the acqui­si­tion of another knowl­edge. This means that for acquir­ing some spe­cific knowl­edge it may be nec­es­sary the exis­tence of some pre­vi­ous knowl­edge.

Table 1 cov­ers the con­cepts, the frame­work to which they referred to, and how the con­cept was addressed in that frame­work. Frame­works are sig­naled by num­bers, iden­ti­fied as ①e-CF, ②SFIA, ③IT2017, ④MSIS2016, ⑤O*NET, ⑥ROME, ⑦iCD, and ⑧IS2020. Ana­lyz­ing the pro­vi­sions in Table 1, although we have equiv­a­lent exam­ples related to the same con­cept, hav­ing dif­fer­ent sources, we note the absence of cri­te­ria for its writ­ing. Set­ting up cri­te­ria for writ­ing the attrib­utes that make up the com­pe­tency con­struct can pro­vide some advan­tages, such as clas­si­fy­ing the ele­ment accord­ing to the con­cept, estab­lish­ing depen­den­cies between com­pe­tency attrib­utes, indi­cat­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary path for the pro­fes­sional, and rais­ing the matu­rity of a par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sional area.

Table 1: Con­cepts and Their Rela­tion­ships with Frame­work

Con­sid­er­ing what has been por­trayed regard­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties involved in inves­ti­gat­ing the sub­ject of com­pe­tency, and avoid­ing being lim­ited to an iso­lated research ini­tia­tive, a step to stan­dard­ize the appli­ca­tion of com­pe­tency in future stud­ies on the sub­ject is sug­gested in this work. This pos­si­bil­ity con­cerns the use of BNF as a means for the def­i­n­i­tion of writ­ing stan­dards for the con­cepts related to the com­pe­tency con­struct, such as those present in this sub­sec­tion, con­sid­er­ing their def­i­n­i­tions and cor­re­spon­dence with reviewed frame­works. Next, we pro­vide a brief overview of BNF.

2.3 Backus-Naur Form

BNF is one of the most used meth­ods for writ­ing syn­tax for con­text-free gram­mars [McCracken and Reilly 2003]. The ori­gin of the name comes from the cre­ators of BNF, John Backus and Peter Naur. The first incar­na­tion of BNF was used to describe the syn­tax of the pro­gram­ming lan­guage ALGOL 60, in 1960. In the fol­low­ing years, updates to the BNF nota­tion were made.

In this pro­posal, we will use BNF, because we believe is the form that allows a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the writ­ing pat­terns, even for non-IST pro­fes­sion­als. Accord­ing to Sebesta [2011], there are three advan­tages when opt­ing for the use of BNF: clar­ity and con­cise­ness of the BNF descrip­tion; the pos­si­bil­ity to use BNF as a basis for a parser; and the BNF-based imple­men­ta­tions being rel­a­tively easy to main­tain due to their mod­u­lar­ity.

From a stan­dard­iza­tion point of view, it is desir­able that meta-syn­taxes, such as BNF and its vari­ants, pos­sess a set of char­ac­ter­is­tics [ISO 1996], like: con­cise­ness, pre­ci­sion, for­mal­ity, nat­u­ral­ity, gen­er­al­ity, sim­plic­ity, self-describ­ing, and lin­ear­ity. In prac­ti­cal terms, con­sid­er­ing BNF as a stan­dard for writ­ing, we can define trans­par­ent delim­i­ta­tions and rules that mit­i­gate the mish­mash asso­ci­ated with def­i­n­i­tions of com­pe­tency.

To write a gram­mar in BNF, one uses the set of sym­bols from the BNF nota­tion. The sym­bols needed to under­stand the com­pe­tency gram­mar that will be pre­sented in the next sec­tion are now addressed.

The sym­bols “<” and “>”, respec­tively used before and after a word, define BNF classes, allow­ing val­ues to be assigned to the class. The value is assigned by using the sym­bol “=” fol­lowed by the value one wants to assign, form­ing an expres­sion such as: <class> = “xpto”.

The sym­bol “+” serves to com­ple­ment infor­ma­tion that will be assigned to a class, such as: <class> = “xpto” + 123. In this exam­ple, “<class>” will have the assigned value “xpto123”.

Another impor­tant sym­bol is “|”, which is equiv­a­lent to the log­i­cal oper­a­tor “or”. It means that the <class> may have one or another value, such as: <class> = “xpto” | “123”.

When using BNF nota­tion, classes can be assigned to the val­ues of another class. The next exam­ple, which con­tains five lines, con­sists of a sequence of value assign­ments. The value that “<main­class>” may have is either “XPTO” or “xpto” or “1234”.

<main­class> = <text> | <num­ber> + “4”
<text> = <cap­i­tal> | <tiny>
<cap­i­tal> = “XPTO”
<tiny> = “XPTO”
<num­ber> = “123”

In BNF nota­tion, there are so-called ter­mi­nals and non-ter­mi­nals. Non-ter­mi­nals will always be between “<” and “>”, while ter­mi­nals are those that never appear on the left side of the “=” sym­bol.

3. Competency Grammar

In view of the sce­nario described for the con­cept of com­pe­tency, we pro­pose a BNF gram­mar that estab­lishes the syn­tac­tic rules for writ­ing com­pe­ten­cies, as well as the ele­ments that make up its struc­ture, accord­ing to the seman­tics con­veyed in the def­i­n­i­tions of the con­cepts. These rules aim to pre­vent the undis­ci­plined use of com­pe­tency related con­cepts, by reduc­ing the vari­a­tions in the appli­ca­tion of these ele­ments and, there­fore, head­ing towards a more mature state in approach­ing the com­pe­tency con­struct. For each com­po­nent of the con­struct, a syn­tax with spe­cific rules for its writ­ing is pro­posed, so that to main­tain and strengthen the writ­ing pat­tern pro­posed.

The main goal is that dif­fer­ent peo­ple involved in a pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tion, such as train­ers, con­trac­tors, and work­ers, may “speak the same lan­guage”. This makes the com­pe­tency approach more direct, accu­rate, and less depen­dent on inter­pre­ta­tions among those involved in the pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ment to deter­mine require­ments for a pro­fes­sion or spe­cialty. Once the com­po­si­tion of com­pe­tency has been defined, a set of spe­cific knowl­edge and skills is estab­lished, which may form the require­ments for the pro­fes­sional to exhibit that com­pe­tency. Through this set of require­ments, it is pos­si­ble to iden­tify the sources that may pro­vide the oppor­tu­ni­ties for pro­fes­sion­als to acquire a cer­tain com­pe­tency, such as train­ing courses or expe­ri­ences to which the pro­fes­sion­als need to be exposed. The syn­tac­tic struc­ture pro­posed for the way of writ­ing the ele­ments that make up the com­pe­tency con­struct is shown in Code 1.

Code 1: Syn­tac­tic Struc­ture of Com­pe­tency Gram­mar

<com­pe­tency> = <expr>
<pos­ture> = <adjec­tive>
<dis­po­si­tion> = <action verb>
<behav­ior> = <action verb> + <expr>
<abil­ity> = <expr>
<task> = <action verb> + <expr>
<tool> = <expr>
<pro­fi­ciency> = “1” | “2” | “3” | “4” | “5”
<skill> = <expr>
<knowl­edge> = <sub­stan­tive> + <expr>
<expr> = <part> | <expr> + <part>
<part> = <sub­stan­tive> | <prepo­si­tion> | <arti­cle>
<adjec­tive> = TEXT
<action verb> = TEXT
<sub­stan­tive> = TEXT
<prepo­si­tion> = TEXT
<arti­cle> = TEXT

To assist in the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the attrib­utes of a pro­fes­sional area accord­ing to the struc­ture of the com­pe­tency con­struct, and to clar­ify the seman­tics asso­ci­ated to cer­tain non-ter­mi­nals in the gram­mar, such as “<adjec­tive>” and “<sub­stan­tive>”, we designed an instru­ment in the form of a deci­sion tree. This instru­ment starts with a sin­gle node (root), divid­ing into pos­si­ble results, fol­low­ing a sequence of ques­tions. These ques­tions cre­ate branches with pos­si­ble answers. The tree includes eight ques­tions (Q), posi­tioned in the nodes that build the branch of the deci­sion tree. The ini­tial node cor­re­sponds to Q1, while the fol­low­ing deci­sion nodes address the other issues. The branches that con­nect the nodes carry the val­ues that guide the user of the deci­sion sup­port mech­a­nism, based on the issues present in the inter­nal nodes. These ques­tions lead the user of the deci­sion tree to clas­sify the word or phrase accord­ing to the con­cept under analy­sis. The paths that lead to the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of any word or sen­tence related to the com­pe­tency con­struct are shown in Fig­ure 1. The tree also includes brief expla­na­tions of the eight ques­tions. The con­cept of pro­fi­ciency is not part of the scheme; since it does not have a script that can be inter­preted (we pro­pose the scale 1–2–3–4–5 to cap­ture increas­ing val­ues of pro­fi­ciency lev­els).

Fig­ure 1: Deci­sion Tree to Con­cepts Clas­si­fi­ca­tion

When using this instru­ment to sup­port the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of a sen­tence or word that is related to the con­text of a pro­fes­sion, it is expected that the user will be able to clas­sify it in one of the con­cepts cov­ered by the com­pe­tency con­struct, bear­ing in mind the def­i­n­i­tion pro­posed for the con­cepts. After­wards, the sen­tence for­mu­lat­ing the pro­fes­sional attribute must be writ­ten accord­ing to the pro­posed BNF gram­mar.

4. Validating the Competency Gramar

Seek­ing to val­i­date the rules of writ­ing the com­pe­tency related con­cepts, eight IST pro­fes­sion­als of three dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties (“Soft­ware Devel­oper”, “Tester”, and “Data Engi­neer”) were asked to indi­cate attrib­utes that they con­sider nec­es­sary in their cur­rent occu­pa­tion, given the demands inher­ent to the envi­ron­ment in which they oper­ate. The respon­dents had between five and seven years of expe­ri­ence in the IST job mar­ket, attend­ing to the role they cur­rently per­form; six (75%) were grad­u­ated in Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (Bach­e­lor), and two (25%) were grad­u­ated in Com­puter Engi­neer­ing (Licensed).

Table 2: Syn­the­sis of Col­lected Data

Respon­dents received a spread­sheet, with each tab of the spread­sheet refer­ring to a con­cept pre­sented in Table 2. For each con­cept pre­sented, its def­i­n­i­tion was also avail­able, as well as the rule for its writ­ing. Each respon­dent had avail­able eight attrib­utes writ­ten accord­ing to the pro­posal, for each con­cept, and they were asked to include five to ten attrib­utes that cor­re­sponded to their pro­fes­sional attri­bu­tion, refer­ring to their work rou­tine, also for each con­cept. Each one had assis­tance avail­able when­ever required, and the dead­line for return­ing the com­pleted work­sheet was seven days. The spread­sheet also had a tab that pre­sented a com­pi­la­tion of the data entered by the respon­dents in all tabs, so that an inte­grated view of their con­tri­bu­tion to their pro­fes­sion was pos­si­ble.

As shown in Table 2, 361 attrib­utes were informed by eight respon­dents about their pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tions. After reclas­si­fi­ca­tion, changes in writ­ing, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of dupli­cates, and the sep­a­ra­tion of some that added more than one attribute in just one sen­tence, 273 records remained. Respon­dents jus­ti­fied such changes, stat­ing they con­sid­ered behav­ior to be “behav­ioral skills”. How­ever, the authors argued that con­sid­er­ing the exis­tence of the behav­ior con­cept in the pro­posal, the skill con­cept refers to the means for the appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge, such as sys­tem doc­u­men­ta­tion, or func­tion­al­ity imple­men­ta­tion, each of which will group a set of asso­ci­ated tasks. At the end of the inter­views, after the analy­sis was per­formed, the respon­dents reviewed all the records and endorsed the clas­si­fi­ca­tions. Inter­ac­tions with respon­dents were car­ried out through video­con­fer­enc­ing, and each meet­ing fol­lowed an indi­vid­ual eval­u­a­tion process for each attribute that raised any doubts about its cat­e­go­riza­tion, writ­ing or the pos­si­bil­ity of divid­ing it into two or more attrib­utes.

Con­sid­er­ing that the study also looked at frame­works related to other areas of pro­fes­sional activ­ity, the oppor­tu­nity to test the rules and stan­dards in dif­fer­ent areas was seized. Thus, five pro­fes­sion­als from other pro­fes­sional areas (Biol­ogy, Human Resource Man­age­ment, Psy­chol­ogy, and Vet­eri­nar­ian) per­formed the pro­ce­dure of fill­ing out the forms with attrib­utes inher­ent to their cur­rent pro­fes­sional occu­pa­tions. After­wards, a process for the col­lec­tion, analy­sis, and val­i­da­tion of data sim­i­lar to the one applied to IST pro­fes­sion­als was con­ducted. In the end, 184 attrib­utes were obtained, prop­erly clas­si­fied in the con­cepts addressed in this work. This effort was jus­ti­fied by the inten­tion to gen­er­al­ize the study to other areas of pro­fes­sional prac­tice, since the pro­posed gram­mar is not intended to be lim­ited to clas­si­fy­ing com­pe­tency attrib­utes only for the IST area, but to offer sup­port for any pro­fes­sional area.

5. Conclusion

In an attempt to stan­dard­ize the approach to the notion of com­pe­tency and related con­cepts, some chal­lenges were faced. These chal­lenges, for the most part, are related to the per­ceived low rigor in the appli­ca­tion of the con­cepts. Hence, in the ini­tial phase of this study, adjust­ments in the def­i­n­i­tion of the con­cepts were made by the authors, in an attempt to clar­ify and sup­port the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of pro­fes­sional attrib­utes among the range of con­cepts involved.

There is a vari­ety of frame­works related to the theme of com­pe­tency, specif­i­cally focused on IST, which orga­nize pro­fes­sional attrib­utes. This vari­ety may be related to the pace of growth of the IST area, where a myr­iad of dif­fer­ent activ­ity sec­tors employs IST pro­fes­sion­als. Since IST play an impor­tant role in all pro­fes­sional areas that require infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing of any nature, IST pro­fes­sion­als are required to oper­ate in diverse envi­ron­ments. This gives rise to a num­ber of IST job speci­fici­ties, accord­ing to par­tic­u­lar con­texts of activ­ity, such as health, logis­tics, edu­ca­tion, gov­ern­ment, and busi­ness. The per­va­sive­ness of the IST pro­fes­sion and the need to broaden the per­spec­tive on com­pe­tency jus­ti­fied the analy­sis of gen­eral com­pe­tency frame­works to find out their approach to the topic of com­pe­tency, in com­par­i­son to the IST frame­works.

How­ever, it is nec­es­sary to con­sider the lim­i­ta­tions of this work. One refers to the num­ber of par­tic­i­pat­ing pro­fes­sion­als. Our test sam­ple involved a small group of pro­fes­sion­als, and we strongly believe that extend­ing the process to IST pro­fes­sion­als with dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties, as well as to pro­fes­sion­als from other areas besides IST (an effort for which the first steps were taken in this study), in future works would put the gram­mar to a stress test, even­tu­ally reveal­ing the need for adjust­ments in the rules of the gram­mar. A sec­ond lim­i­ta­tion regards the type of indi­vid­u­als that par­tic­i­pated in this study. Besides IST pro­fes­sion­als, it also makes sense to involve IST recruiters and IST lead­ers to val­i­date the pro­fes­sional attrib­utes informed by the respon­dents, mak­ing this inquiry a new phase of the gram­mar val­i­da­tion process. Along the same line, the par­tic­i­pa­tion of IST edu­ca­tors and train­ers would pro­vide fur­ther indi­ca­tions on the valid­ity and use­ful­ness of the gram­mar. Although labo­ri­ous, these are essen­tial steps for the refine­ment of the com­pe­tency gram­mar and for increas­ing the con­fi­dence in its prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion.

To improve and sup­ple­ment the data on IST com­pe­ten­cies, struc­tured accord­ing to the com­pe­tency con­struct and for­mu­late observ­ing the com­pe­tency gram­mar, more work is required. Besides enhanc­ing the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the IST com­pe­ten­cies versed in this work, there is a need to start col­lect­ing and orga­niz­ing attrib­utes per­tain­ing to other IST com­pe­ten­cies. After reach­ing a cer­tain level of matu­rity in the descrip­tion of an IST com­pe­tency, or even in an abil­ity, it becomes pos­si­ble to move on to the next stage. This stage would involve the def­i­n­i­tion of the degree of dif­fi­culty of the abil­ity, map­ping it to the lev­els of pro­fi­ciency pro­posed in this study, as well as point­ing out depen­den­cies between pro­fes­sional attrib­utes. To this end, it is deemed nec­es­sary to engage pro­fes­sion­als, both to define the degree of dif­fi­culty and to point out the depen­den­cies. This work would pro­vide guid­ance of great rel­e­vance for pro­fes­sion­als who wish to evolve in their careers.

The gen­er­al­iza­tion of this pro­posal is envis­aged as a future endeavor. The idea is to involve researchers from dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sional areas to col­lab­o­rate in the data col­lec­tion, analy­sis, and val­i­da­tion of the process for defin­ing com­pe­tency pro­files, using the same set of rules–the com­pe­tency gram­mar–pre­sented in this work.

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