Team Growth System
Designing a Career Development Framework
As our UX team grew, I needed a structured way to develop talent, clarify expectations, and align growth with evolving team needs.
How
I implemented a skills-and-goals matrix to assess and align individual contributor (IC) capabilities across core UX competencies. Each IC and I independently evaluated their strengths and growth areas, then aligned together during quarterly conversations. This created clear expectations and aligned individual career ambitions with evolving organizational needs.
To reinforce progress, I introduced a Manager-facing behavior tracker that documented concrete examples of growth on a weekly basis. This enabled timely coaching and recognition while providing structured, defensible evidence to support promotion decisions throughout the year and during formal review cycles.
What - Skills Matrix
Each skill was rated on a 5-point scale that added up to a total of 50 points. Notes detailing specific examples and previous scores were tracked quarterly for reference during yearly HR performance reviews.
Outcome & Impact
This framework directly supported four promotions across three team members over three years and enabled two multi-stage career progressions 1) Intern → Associate → Researcher and 2) Designer → Researcher → Senior. Anecdotally, every team member reported increased confidence in the promotion process and reduced ambiguity in manager expectations