Unappreciated Product Development Skills
Unappreciated Product Development Skills
Introduction
In the world of product development, hiring for the right skills is paramount. Yet, hiring managers and HR people often fail to appreciate the necessary core skills, and thus certain crucial skills often go unsought, overshadowed by more flashy competencies or specific technical abilities. While technical expertise is a nice to have, ignoring these unappreciated skills can lead to teams and departments that lack cohesion, struggle with efficiency, and miss out on a broader understanding of the development landscape.
Top Ten Overlooked Skills and Their Consequences
| # | Skill | Hiring Consequences |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Importance of the Way the Work Works, incl subsidiarity. | Teams lack a holistic view, leading to systemic issues and an inability to see beyond their immediate tasks. |
| 2 | Risk Management | Teams are reactive, rather than proactive. This leads to crisis management scenarios and frequently derailed release schedules. |
| 3 | Role of Variation | Projects may frequently miss deadlines or go over budget due to a lack of preparedness for uncertainties. |
| 4 | Flow Optimisation | Teams face frequent bottlenecks, resulting in uneven workloads, delays, and heightened stress levels. |
| 5 | Feedback Loops | Products misaligned with user needs or market demands due to a reluctance or inability to seek or respond to feedback. |
| 6 | Systems Thinking | Teams operate in silos, leading to redundant efforts, inflated costs, delays, poor quality, and a fragmented product experience. |
| 7 | Value Stream Mapping | Misaligned priorities, arising from a focus on tasks without understanding their overall product value. |
| 8 | Make Things Visible | Lack of transparency resulting in miscommunications, overlooked issues, and poorly informed decisions. |
| 9 | Limiting Work in Progress (WIP) | Overall productivity and work quality decrease due to excessive multitasking and constant context switching. |
| 10 | Attending to Folks’ Needs | Neglecting this skill results in disengaged or unmotivated teams, decreasing engagement, discrationary effort and productivity, and increasing turnover rates. |
Conclusion
To create a well-rounded and effective software development team, hiring managers migh choose to look beyond just technical proficiencies. By recognising and valuing these often-unappreciated skills, companies can increase the likelihood of building and maintaining cohesive, efficient, and innovative teams equipped to tackle the multi-faceted challenges of modern product development.
As the product development landscape continues to evolve, sadly, appreciation of the essential skills required to navigate it does not. Is it yet time to give these unappreciated competencies the recognition they deserve in the hiring process and beyond?
Offer
If your organisation suffers from any of the maladies listed under “consequences” in the table above, get in touch today for clear, independent advice on steps you can take to tackle the skills shortfall: bob.marshall@fallingblossoms.com
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