In essence, the objective of this bachelor thesis was to identify and create a model for skill-based workforce planning for the operational unit Digital Assurance, which is part of PwC. The problem was broken down into two main milestones: 1) Analyse the current workforce in terms of available skills and competencies within the DA practice and visualize the skill supply 2) Identify how the skill aspect within DA can be added to a demand and supply perspective. The results will be used to generate a model or an approach that can help to connect skills and demand.

The overall goal of this thesis was to identify or create a model for skill-based workforce planning. Therefore, the problem was well-defined, and thus design thinking was utilized for the development of a suitable model. The ideation phase of design thinking, which focuses on identifying possible solutions either individually or in a team was a suitable approach to validate suggestions made in literature and to identify new unknown solutions.

The outcome of this bachelor thesis is far more than just a skill-based workforce planning model. The thesis shows how to collect and categorize skills based on a hierarchical approach, introduces a way of identifying potential skill supply shortages based on the application of experience ratios, suggests multiple approaches to facilitate the identification of skill demand, creates a skill gap analysis model tailored to the needs of DA, shows important consideration into how headcount based strategic workforce planning can be performed, creates a visual dashboard showing the skill supply of DA, and finally outlines the maintenance process steps required to upkeep the skill supply dashboard. Additionally, the reader will see that design thinking methodology is more than just a buzzword by demonstrating the successful application of the ideation phase. The ideation phase of design thinking allowed to find answers to a rather complex problem: the identification of skill demand. Further, the reader will gain in depth knowledge about strategic workforce planning based on extensive literature research performed.