Essential Skills for a Software Engineer

The profession of a Software Engineer is geared towards adopting the best practices in building software applications. It is important that engineers should know what practices are utilized by the industry especially those specialized skills that they need to learn in order to leverage their capability to achieve their goals in development.

Close user involvement
Users are the primary author of the functional and non-functional requirements known as product features. It is therefore essential for a software engineer to learn how to interact with users during the course of development. They should develop their communication and negotiation skills in situations where a certain requirement needs to be changed. Engineers need to be able to translate technical requirements into business requirements in order for the users to understand and validate them. In the long run, the users will be the one using the system.

Proper project management
Project management is essential for a software engineer because they normally work in teams. There can be problems with communication, personality conflicts, cost and schedule overruns, and scope creep. They need to know how to allocate resources for every activity in a work breakdown structure. They need to identify the possible risks and define contingency plans in cases where a risk becomes a problem especially during project execution. Engineers need to know how to interact with the higher management to negotiate added resources and make decisions on some constraints in the project.

Use of well-defined processes
Engineers are known to be problem solvers and analytical thinkers. However, one key aspect of an engineer is the utilization of defined processes in the creation and building of a software product. It then follows the principle of "A quality process produces a quality product". There is no such thing as unstructured practices because engineers are responsible with the products they build for customers. Even Agile Development has a process in building software. The goal is always to satisfy the needs and demands of clients through a systematic and disciplined way of doing things.

In general, engineers need to be more committed towards delivering quality products to customers. They need to learn how to build and continuously improve these practices. It is the one thing that differentiates them with other IT Professionals in the field of software development.