What do you do if your database development skills need a boost in soft skills?

Understanding your role as a database developer and how it aligns with stakeholder goals and needs is the first step toward enhancing soft skills. When explaining technical concepts or justifying decisions, be clear and confident about your role, the challenges you encounter, and the expectations you must meet. As a database developer, aligning actions and communication with purpose builds stronger stakeholder relationships and enhances overall effectiveness.

A silent revolution has occurred in the DB world over the last 10-15 years. As memory and network speed have increased, the power and scope of what DB can do have increased severalfold. As a DB developer, your soft skills are to bring your appreciation of the fundamental entities that drive the business and hence part of your DB design and translate that knowledge stakeholders can relate to through their interest in the business, developers, business owners, shareholders can have their way to relate to an entity like the product category, your need to understand your role in requirement gathering, design or performance boost or ease of use for each stakeholder, create environment and tools that each stakeholder would feel at ease to use.

If my database development skills needed a soft skills boost, I would start by understanding my role within the team and the organization. It would be crucial for me to recognize how my database work fits into the broader picture of the project and aligns with the team's goals. This understanding would help me tailor my soft skills development to better support my role and contribute effectively.

It is important to listen actively to stakeholders, whether they are clients, users, managers, or peers, in order to improve soft skills. In addition to paying attention to their words, tone, and motivations, active listening involves asking open-ended questions, seeking clarification, summarizing key points, and offering feedback. By active listening, you gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives, needs, challenges, and expectations. In addition, it fosters rapport, trust, and respect, while minimizing misunderstandings and conflicts, thereby improving communication and collaboration.

To enhance my soft skills in database development, I would engage in active listening. Making a conscious effort to listen attentively to my team members, stakeholders, and clients would enable me to understand their perspectives, concerns, and requirements better. Active listening fosters better collaboration and ensures that my database solutions meet the needs of all stakeholders.

The third step in refining soft skills is to effectively collaborate with stakeholders, particularly fellow developers. The process involves teamwork, idea sharing, resource sharing, and mutual support, as well as adherence to best practices such as version control, code documentation, testing, and code review. Collaboration enables team members to leverage their strengths, learn from feedback and suggestions, and consistently deliver high-quality database solutions.

In addition to the above, I would also prioritize open and transparent communication with my colleagues, sharing insights, ideas, and concerns openly. Collaborating effectively would also involve respecting diverse viewpoints, being open to feedback, and adapting my approach to accommodate varying project requirements and team dynamics.

In addition to enhancing soft skills, database development involves solving problems creatively, which involves applying logical thinking, analytical skills, and troubleshooting techniques. Through creative problem-solving, obstacles can be overcome, performance can be improved, and skills can be enhanced. It entails exploring varying options, experimenting with new solutions, and learning from mistakes.

You need a clear picture on what entities are independent and what dependencies are there between entities to create performant indexes,but also make the developers to build prototypes of their application flow; as a DB developer you can go the extra mile by being aware of full application flows and use-cases, no matter what kind of Database you are supporting- get some sample realistic data for the application and study the load on scaling up the data, build queries that will be required by the app even before the application is built -then you can have more constructive dialogues with the developers even give them some handy create /update /delete tools.

As the fifth step in refining soft skills, the database development environment must be able to adapt quickly to changes and new circumstances. In addition, it involves being proactive, curious, and eager to acquire new skills and update existing knowledge when faced with new requirements, technologies, tools, or standards. With rapid adaptation, we can cope with uncertainty, seize opportunities, and maintain relevance and competitiveness.

Data science requirement on DB imposes new skills:Working knowledge of cloud services (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) and managed database services (e.g., Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, Azure SQL Database) to leverage cloud scalability and services for data storage and processing. Proficiency with data visualization tools and platforms (e.g., Tableau, Power BI, Grafana) to create insightful dashboards and reports. Mechanisms to ensure data privacy, including knowledge of regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, etc. This includes techniques for anonymization, pseudonymization, and secure data access controls. Implementing solutions for streaming data and real-time analytics technologies like Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, and stream-processing systems.