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Top1. Introduction
Human capital is the most essential asset comprising of the skill, dexterity and knowledge possessed by employees, necessary for achieving the goals of organizations (Guest, 2001; Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Barney, 1991). It is also an area that needs a lot of improvement particularly in IT sector. The human resources are educated people and IT organizations require competent employees for achieving results proficiently, as IT organizations rely on the competence of the workforce for producing a ROI (return on investment) on the usage of technological and physical resources. Thus, human capital is the decisive contributor in determining organizational development nowadays. In addition, IT sector is confronted with the worldwide economic crisis, globalization, technological innovations and other changes. “Workforce characteristics and HR activities supply without a doubt the major source of opportunity for enhancing the productivity” (Boehm et al., 2000). Individual competence is needed to construct core competence of modern firms at organizational level (Bassellier et al., 2001). IT organizations need to systematically pursue competency management (Chouhan and Srivastava, 2013; 2014; 2015).
The major factor influencing the software development process is competent software engineers with reference to software development teams (Pressman, 2005). Boehm states that “citizen factors have the most impact in shaping the endeavor needed to build up a software creation ” (Boehm, 1981), and “Workforce characteristics and HR activities offer by a long way the biggest foundation of chance for enhancing IT development productivity” (Boehm et al., 2000).
Individual competency is needed in forming the core competency, vital for today's firms (Bassellier et al., 2001). Numerous studies have been done in IT field (e.g. Sackman et al., 1968) since 1960s. Prolific studies examining the importance of factors involving human capital in IT sector has surfaced after 1990s (Humphrey, 1998), and it is still increasingly growing from the outset of 21st century (Tomayko & Hazzan, 2004; Constantine, 2001; van Solingen et al., 2000). Chouhan and Srivastava (2013; 2014; 2015) have recommended for conducting competence assessment and development for managing human capital in IT sector.
For improving the ability of the employees, numerous schemes, e.g., People-CMM (People Capability Maturity Model) (Curtis et al. 2001), elucidate a development plan commencing from improvised, erratically performed HR practices, and cultivate into a established practice infrastructure for constantly uplifting employee ability. According to People-CMM, level 3 means the area labeled as ”Career Development”, that executes the occupational career to make certain that employees are given chances to nurture their competencies which allow them to accomplish career goals. For achieving level 3, firms should decide about various occupational careers their workforce can assume, describing the occupational profiles and equivalent competence levels in a precise manner.