Such competencies might be a knowledge of the overall business a company is in, the products it sells, and the drivers of the industry. A course for all employees sought to provide general knowledge of the software industry and Microsoft's strategies. Within each of the four foundation competencies there are two different types. Explicit competencies involved knowledge of and experience with specific tools or methods, e.g. Excel or SQL 6.0. Requirements definition competency, for example, is an implicit competence.
Implicit competencies involve more abstract thinking and reasoning skills.
At Microsoft, the implicit competencies are expected to remain quite stable over time, although one new one, Web authoring, was recently added. Explicit competencies, of course, change frequently with rapid changes in fortunes of particular languages and tools. Within all four competency types, there are 137 implicit competencies and 200 explicit ones. Within each type of competency there are also four defined skill levels. Each skill level for each competency is described in three or four bullet points that make the level clear and measurable.