Do Soft Skills Really Matter in IT?

IT is viewed by many people as being something technical. They have a vision of managers with lot’s of plans, documents and spreadsheets, and nerds that are sitting behind their computer doing the “real work”. It may be out there, but I don’t see it that often.

What I see are people working together to deliver software solutions that work, which help their customers in their daily work, and deliver business value to the company. Communication and collaboration are essential to make people and teams successful. So for me, soft skills really matter in IT!

Yes, Soft Skills Matter in IT!

Here are some examples why I think that soft skills matter:

• Most of the root causes that teams find when examining defects or project problems have to do with knowledge, experience, and soft skills.
• Books like Peopleware and The Mythical Man Month make sense to people, and have helped organizations for many years to improve.
• In the agile retrospectives that I facilitate, professionals often discuss how they communicate and collaborate, and look for strengths that can be used to further increase team performance.
• The People-CMM, an accompanying model for the CMMI, contains many practices that can be used to empower your people.
• Organizations start measuring how happy their professionals are with the Happiness Metric, because happy worker are more effective.
• Methods from the positive psychology, like Solution Focus, Theory U, and Appreciative Inquiry have evidence that recognizing and developing soft skills makes a difference for teams.

I have often seen how Soft Skills make the difference between teams that are successful, and those who have problems. The ability the communicate, collaborate, reflect and give feedback, and continuously improve the way of working is crucial for team members to deliver value to their customers. Soft Skills help to discuss and solve issues that come up, get rid of anything that frustrates team members. It is more fun to work in such a team.

What do you think?

What is your experience? Do soft skills really matter in IT? Have you seen benefits when professionals improved their soft skills? Is it worth investing time and money to make it possible that people can develop themselves?

Please share your experiences!

Note This post is based on the successful blog post Do Soft Skills Really Matter in IT? from BenLinders.com.