Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an application development director and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An application development director designs and supervises projects in IT that are meant to improve operations as well as taking charge of the overall planning, coordinating, and supervising all the activities about the design, creation, and implementation of applications in the organization. He/she manages the application development teams from when the idea is conceived to the final product.
Other specific responsibilities include setting deadlines and goals for the teams; making sure the project is running on schedule; finding, hiring and retaining the team of application development experts; managing the budget and setting forecasts as well as improving applications to aid in improving and maintaining the security of sensitive organizations information.
Core Skills Required to be an Application Development Director
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An application development director should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Customer Oriented:
Customer Oriented is a skill that focuses primarily on the client as the King offering quality services that meet the customer's expectations with an aim to inspire people rather than just try to sell their product.
An Application Development Director needs to be customer oriented to boost the image of their company, stand out from the rest of the people and devise innovations of tomorrow that focus its sights on a new target ? satisfying the customer expectations.
Negotiation Skills:
Negotiation Skills are a deliberative process by which people settle their differences through an acceptable agreement to both parties to co-exist without argument and dispute in the workplace.
An Application Development Director must learn to resolve any disputes that arise in the workplace using the principles of fairness, seeking mutual benefit and maintaining a cordial relationship that builds a success at the workplace.
Interviewing:
Interviewing is an essential skill in making a sound hiring decision that seeks to find out the candidate's background, work experience, skill level, general overall intelligence, enthusiasm, attitudes, etc.
An Application Development Director ought to be equipped with the right techniques to handle interviews whether they are face to face or telephone as they can be grueling and intimidating to the candidate; clarity and calmness of tone and the atmosphere are ideal.
Developing Others:
Developing others is an unremitting process that focuses on the broader, longer-term growth of individuals to nurture them to their potential and promote future development.
An Application Development Director needs to support, coach, positively impacts and effectively aid in developing talents of their staff by motivating them to become outstanding in their behavioral change and performance improvement that opens up development opportunities in the organization.
Physical Abilities:
Physical Abilities is the ability of one's strengths and limitations that are also known as the individual resources to perform well at the tasks given.
An Application Development Director must understand that his employees are very different types of people who vary in what they can or cannot do and treat each one with respect while supporting them to become the best in what they do.
Self Confidence:
Self Confidence is the ability to know who you are and what you are capable of doing which shows in your behavior, your body language, how you speak, etc.
An Application Development Director must be confident enough to inspire confidence in others while encouraging them to handle daily tasks and their personal lives with self-confidence that will, in turn, produce a well-rounded individual.
Conceptual Thinking:
Conceptual Thinking is the ability to recognize a situation or problem by identifying patterns or connections while addressing the underlying issues.
An Application Development Director must be a conceptual thinker who has a keen understanding of why things have to be done the way they are; he has to think at an abstract level and apply his insights to the situation across all facets to compete in the diverse and growing economy.
Goal and Objective Setting:
Goal and Objective Setting is the strategic plan that is set and laid down identifying how goals should be accomplished, by who and by what time.
An Application Development Director must detect and schedule each employee's goals, strategy, and objectives and keep motivating them to ensure all of them are met within the set time bringing growth to both the company and the employee.
Project Management:
Project Management is structuring a to-do list for your project or company containing tasks and responsibilities as well as creating a roadmap for the execution of those duties promptly.
An Application Development Director must place emphasis on the application of the project management methodologies and principles by the staff in the daily functions and responsibilities to foster efficiently as well as create a competitive advantage in the heavily competitive business space.
Meeting Management:
Meeting Management is the skill to know and understands the reason why an official meeting should be held and who should attend.
An Application Development Director must learn how to properly organize and conduct meetings to contribute to organizational effectiveness by determining situations that require a meeting, understanding types of meetings, planning the meeting, running the meeting to the close and managing people after the meeting.
Hard Skills Required to be an Application Development Director
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An application development director should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.