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Inside a tree, the prerequisite chains from the skills page become visible paths. Arrows run from each prerequisite up to the skill it unlocks, so the tree isn't just a grouping — it's a route map. Reading one is mostly instinct once you know two conventions: ...

Every tree has roots — the skills you must already hold before you can enter the tree. And here's the elegant part: you never place roots by hand. The tree grows its own. The derivation is mechanical. Look at the lowest skills in the tree — the ones whose prer...

A forest is a group of trees — the full scope of knowledge for a single role. "Front End Developer" is a forest. Its trees (Testing, Frameworks, JavaScript/TypeScript, Styling/CSS) are the logical slices; the forest is the whole territory. The default shape: o...

A forest maps a role's knowledge; ranks map the journey through it. A rank is a seniority level — junior / mid / senior by default — and each rank is defined as a concrete set of skills, at given levels, that a person at that rank is expected to hold. The key ...

Skills are defined once, organisation-wide — and roles overlap. A front-end developer and a designer both hold "accessibility basics"; a data analyst and a backend developer both hold "SQL." So when you stand two forests side by side, they share ground. That s...

Some teams are too varied for fixed ladders. A small agency where everyone wears three hats, a research group, a startup where "the role" changes quarterly — forcing a junior/mid/senior forest onto teams like these produces a map nobody recognises. The method ...

The method lives or dies on honest assessment — and the levels are built to make honesty achievable. They're defined by observable behaviour: not "how good is this person?" but "what happens when they do the work?" The tells, level by level: Beginner — the wor...

Every assessment source has a bias signature. Knowing them is most of the defence — and it's why the method prefers levels that several sources can confirm. Inflation. A level claimed (or granted) above the behaviour. It feels harmless, even kind — until the m...

Assessing a handful of people honestly is a discipline. Assessing fifty — while levels feed reviews, promotions, and eventually pay — is a system design problem. The pressure is predictable: once levels touch money, levels inflate. Not because people are disho...

A forest is a living map, and living things need tending. The method runs on two nested rhythms — one for people, one for the forest itself — plus one hard deadline. Individual progress: roughly monthly. A short catch-up per person keeps their levels accurate....

A forest review is gardening, and it makes exactly three kinds of change. Walking in knowing this keeps the session focused — two to three hours with the team and the lead, not an offsite. Skills move between ranks. Expectations shift. The skill that marked a ...

The moment more than one team runs forests, a tension appears. The organisation wants consistency — comparable levels, comparable ranks, reports that add up. Teams want fit — trees that match their work, not a committee's idea of it. Resolve this the wrong way...

Your role is a forest; this chapter is about walking it. First, learn to read the map from where you stand. Follow the arrows. Within a tree, arrows run from a prerequisite up to the more advanced skill. The path is the prerequisite chain — you can't take a sk...

The forest shows every possible path. Yours needs choosing — and five principles do most of the choosing for you. Clear the roots first. Hold a tree's roots before entering it. Skipping entry requirements is the surest way to get stuck later — the missing foun...