Skill Cards
Boost Personal & Professional Development with a Card Game!
What are Skill Cards?
This is a game built to provide structure to feedback and development conversations.
Skill Cards lives from conversation - the cards and the rules of the game are pillars on which to build a dialogue with your leader or someone from your team. The essence of the game is in aligning your view of your skills with your manager's view.
When playing it is important to remember: there is no wrong way to place the cards - every placement is a spark for a discussion and, through discussion, alignment.
Below you can find a detailed instructions.
1. Build your deck
Skill cards are about looking at your individual skillset, not just the skills that are traditional to your role. Are you an engineer with analytics expertise, take those cards! A designer that wants to do more product management, add those cards to your deck!
Make your deck your own. The goal is to create opportunities to discuss your individual skillset with your manager - there are no wrong answers.
All of the available cards are grouped by function. Grab all of the stacks that you feel reflect part of your skillset and move them to frame labeled "Your Deck". This is the basis from which you will sort the cards in the next step. A set of "shared" cards are already there - these represent skills that are relevant regardless of what your role is.
Communicate which cards you have selected with your manager. They will be sorting the same cards as you!
2. Sort
Sort your cards into the three groups:
Non-Focus
Good Enough
To Improve
Have your manager do the same separately on a different board. In the next step you will compare your evaluation with theirs.
3. Compare
Have your people manager copy and paste their sorted cards into this board. Place them beside the play-field, somewhere where you can sort them easily. Together, take the sorted cards and try to match them.
Place all cards that match on top of your own. Did you place them differently? Put your managers cards that don't match up separately (in the respective column) to discuss.
4. Discuss & Align
Discuss! Start with "non-focus" and move towards "to improve", focusing most on cards that you placed differently. There is no wrong way to place the cards. It may be that you are in alignment, but evaluated a different aspect of a card. Discuss and come to an agreement on what aspect of the card is relevant.
As you agree on the correct placement, make changes! Consider using post-its to write down important points for the cards you discuss.
When you reach "to improve", discuss each card.
5. Plan
Consider the cards and create a priority. Reduce to the most important to create focus.
Consider what the next steps are. Create a plan.
Describe what aspect of each card is relevant to you and your development.
Capture notes from your discussion.
Describe next steps of what you can do to begin improving.
Document! Make a plan to revisit these items in regularly.
This template was created by Mobile.de.
Get started with this template right now.
Parking Lot Matrix Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Ideation, Meetings
When the creative energy is flowing, a workshop or meeting will yield a lot of new ideas — but not all are on-topic or currently feasible. Roll them right onto a parking lot matrix, a simple, effective tool for separating the best ideas from those that are promising but could use more research or discussion. This template will let you easily make your own parking lot matrix, which will come in especially handy during long meetings (and when you have teammates who tend to go off-topic).
FMEA Analysis Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning, Software Development
When you’re building a business or running a team, risk comes with the territory. You can’t eliminate it. But you CAN identify it and mitigate it, to up your odds of success. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a powerful tool designed to help you manage risk and potential problems by spotting them within a process, product, or system. And you’ll spot them earlier in your process—to let you sidestep costly changes that arise late in the game or, worse, after they’ve impacted your customers and their experience.
Agile Marketing Kanban
Works best for:
Agile, Kanban
The Agile Marketing KANBAN template adapts Kanban principles to the marketing domain, enabling teams to manage campaigns, tasks, and workflows efficiently. It provides visual boards for planning, prioritizing, and tracking marketing activities, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and timely delivery of campaigns. With customizable columns and swimlanes, this template empowers marketing teams to visualize work, limit work in progress, and optimize their processes, driving agility and effectiveness in marketing operations.
PI Planning Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning, Software Development
PI planning stands for “program increment planning.” Part of a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), PI Planning helps teams strategize toward a shared vision. In a typical PI planning session, teams get together to review a program backlog, align cross-functionally, and decide on the next steps. Many teams carry out a PI planning event every 8 to 12 weeks, but you can customize your planning schedule to fit your needs. Use PI planning to break down features, identify risks, find dependencies, and decide which stories you’re going to develop.
Impact/Effort Matrix Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
Growing organizations have countless to-do’s and only so many hours in a day (or weeks before a big launch) to get them done. That’s where an impact effort matrix comes in. It gives you a quick visual guide to help prioritize your tasks and know exactly what’s worth doing. Using our template, you can create a matrix that organizes your activities into four main categories: quick wins that are low effort, effort-intensive projects that provide long-term returns, fill-ins that are low effort but low value, and time-wasters.
Project - Timeline & Key Infos
Works best for:
Agile, Project Management
The Project - Timeline & Key Infos template provides a visual framework for planning and tracking project timelines, milestones, and key information. It enables teams to align on project objectives, allocate resources, and monitor progress effectively. With customizable timelines and informative dashboards, this template empowers project managers and stakeholders to stay organized and informed throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring successful delivery within scope, time, and budget constraints.