# Source context

> Data sources and assessment guidance for each competency in an engineering career ladder, organised by IC level.

Source context is the reference behind develoom's mapping step. For every competency in a career ladder, and for every IC level from IC1 to IC5, it describes what evidence to look for in everyday engineering work and how that evidence is interpreted when building a growth report.

## Why it exists

A career framework describes behaviours in prose. Turning prose into an honest assessment needs two things: knowing which artefacts carry the signal, and knowing what "good" looks like at each level. Source context writes both down so the mapping is inspectable rather than a black box.

## What a cell contains

- The artefacts that carry evidence for that competency, for example pull request reviews, design documents, ticket threads, incident write-ups, or Slack discussions.
- What distinguishes the level from the one below it.
- How develoom reads that evidence when it builds a source-context report.

## Competencies covered

Coding, quality, debugging, design and architecture, technical documentation, estimations, execution planning, scope, status, commitments and accountability, alignment, consensus, influence, feedback, mentoring, interviewing, goal setting, self learning, customer needs, authority on customer needs, tradeoffs across multiple customers, strategic thinking and planning, and thought partnership.

The interactive version is at <https://develoom.com/source-context>.

## Related

- [Home](https://develoom.com/): what develoom is and how it works.
- [Demo](https://develoom.com/demo): a two minute walkthrough.