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Top Skills Wanted by Agile Employers

September 26th, 2007 by Kavan Wolfe

I’ve often read lists like this one, that suggest the skills IT employers want. Well, today at the Agile Vancouver conference, a room full of agile development employers was asked what they look for. I was expecting “machine learning,” “security,” “mobile applications,” and maybe “artificial intelligence.” Nope.

Here is the list they gave:

  • Understanding principles of object oriented development
  • Conceptual understanding of relational databases
  • Knowledge of [design] patterns
  • Ability to think abstractly
  • Basic accounting
  • Understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle
  • Ability to prototype to the correct level

    • I’m not making any claims about the generalizability of this list. I’m just throwing it out there to let you know that maybe some of those popular lists floating about the web are not consistent with what one room full of presidents, CEOs and team leaders spent an hour and a half discussing.

    This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 11:32 am and is filed under software, Information Technology, list. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    2 Responses to “Top Skills Wanted by Agile Employers”

    1. Ashley Moran Says:
      September 27th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

      This is pretty much what my current employer ( http://www.codeweavers.net/ ) looks for. Certainly when I personally write a job spec, it looks like:
      * Understanding PRINCPILES of object oriented development
      * CONCEPTUAL understanding of relational databases
      * Knowledge of design patterns
      * TDD/BDD

      I tend to use different words for the things in caps but the idea is the same. Abstract thinking is kinda implicit in all these.

      Prototyping is not a word I am familiar with. It means you show the client the first version before you turn it into production code, right?

      Have to say, I’ve never asked for accounting. Not sure why a developer would need this? Most understand it to the extent they know how much they are getting paid.

    2. Kavan Wolfe Says:
      September 29th, 2007 at 5:25 pm

      I think the particular person who said accounting ran a software company that developed accounting systems.

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