Skill trees
A map of what you've built, and where it goes next.
Your skill tree is not a report card. It is a picture of your competencies across six domains, filled in by the courses you take, the scenarios you work through, and the experience you already brought with you. Nothing on it ever goes down.
Skill trees are part of the Competency Cafe learning app, in development.
Six domains. Competencies a recruiter would actually search for.
The taxonomy has one rule. If a hiring manager would not search for it, a recruiter would not filter on it, and a professional would not put it on LinkedIn, it is not a competency. It is a sub-topic inside one.
That keeps the grain right. Not "communication", which is too broad to work on. Not "how to calculate a RICE score", which is too small to matter. The level in between: "prioritization and trade-off reasoning".
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Strategy
Vision and roadmapping, market and competitive analysis, prioritization and trade-off reasoning, business model and pricing, innovation and problem framing, strategic frameworks.
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Discovery
User research and interviewing, journey mapping and service blueprinting, voice of customer practice, data analysis and product metrics, persona and segment development, opportunity identification.
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Delivery
Agile and sprint management, requirements and specification writing, release and launch coordination, technical fluency, quality thinking.
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Leadership
Stakeholder management, cross-functional team leadership, communication and storytelling, coaching and developing others, conflict resolution and negotiation, executive presence.
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Operations
Process design and improvement, change management, vendor and partner management, resource and capacity planning, knowledge management and documentation, operational scaling.
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AI and emerging tech
AI literacy and practical application, AI product management, AI-assisted workflows, responsible AI and ethics, evaluating AI tools and vendors.
The set grows as the catalog does. A new course that covers something the taxonomy has no home for creates a new competency in the domain it belongs to.
There is no max level.
Competencies do not have levels that cap out. Each one carries an XP total that keeps growing, and the tree reads that total into a depth:
- Spark
- Developing
- Practiced
- Strong
- Deep
- Mastery
Mastery is not the end. A practitioner at twenty years is a different professional than one at five, and the tree keeps showing that difference instead of flattening both into "expert".
You will not see "Level 3" anywhere. You see a fill, your XP, and what put it there.
Money buys access. XP comes from doing the work.
Completing a course adds XP to the one to three competencies its author mapped it to. Working through a scenario adds XP to the competencies your choices actually exercised, which means two people can finish the same scenario with different trees.
Replaying a scenario down a new branch is worth half. Replaying the same branch is worth nothing. There is no way to grind.
Reaching Deep in a single competency takes courses and several scenarios where you genuinely used it. One course does not make you Deep in stakeholder management, and the tree will not pretend it did.
Point it at a role and see what that role would take.
A career path is a map of roles you are considering. Product leadership, operations leadership, the founder route, or one you build yourself. Every role on it carries a suggested competency profile drawn from what job postings actually ask for, what practitioners in the role say matters, and what people perform well on in that role's scenarios.
Your tree scores against that profile and shows a readiness fill. Tap a role and you get the detail: which competencies are already there, and which courses and scenarios would take you further.
Readiness is advice, not a gate. You can attempt any role's scenario at any number. The scenario meets you where you are and tells you the truth afterward.
You can hold several paths at once. What if I stay in product. What if I move to operations. What if I go founder. The competencies transfer across all of them, because they are the same person's competencies.
What's not here.
- No leaderboards.
- Competence is not a competition, and nobody needs to know where they rank against a stranger.
- No streaks.
- Come back whenever. Progress is permanent.
- No decay.
- Take time off and your tree is exactly where you left it.
- No confetti.
- The work is the reward.
- No time-limited anything.
- Learning does not expire, so nothing here is going to tell you it does.
One tree free. All of them with membership.
A free account gets you one skill tree, your saved progress, and every free resource on the site.
Membership adds the rest of the trees, the scenarios, the coaching conversations, a course each quarter, and the community.
Map what you have. Then go add to it.
A free account gets you a tree and every free resource on the site. The course menu starts at $30. Membership opens the rest.