Your Guide to Non-Coding Careers in the Digital (Tech) Space
It is not uncommon to think computer language programming or coding proficiency are essential to landing a high-paying job in tech. Yes, a fundamental understanding of how your organization delivers software is key. However, that doesn’t always translate to deep technical know-how.
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a succinct list of roles in the tech industry you should consider applying for with a non-technical background. More than capitalizing on your soft skills, they can give you a taste of a new industry, helping you build the fundamental understanding necessary to start working on the development side of products and services.
Product Owner
This role is focused on ensuring the development team performs tasks essential to creating a product. A product owner (PO) also communicates the clients’ and customers’ needs to developers. The role stems from the Scrum project management framework and involves responsibilities like:
- Implementing user stories
- Sharing customer feedback throughout the development process
- Conducting market research
- Managing product development
Succeeding in this role requires strong strategic and communication skills. This is because POs manage a product backlog, which includes all the tasks necessary to develop an offering.
Start by building a culture of transparency, as it can help increase cooperation between business and the development side of things. “The most successful products are made when the teams creating them cooperate and dedicate themselves to similar goals,” says Hrithik Rastogi, the founder of ExtraHike, a night school for aspiring POs.
This role sits at the intersection of business and technology, so a solid ability to perform under pressure, collaborate with team members, and problem solve, all while being empathetic, helps to keep everyone on the same page and fosters a culture of working interdepartmentally and cross-functionally.
Other necessary skills include being analytical, which helps in knowing how to market your client’s offering to its target audience based on current market research. Business acumen is also essential, as you’ll need to decipher what investments are necessary to get a client’s product off the ground and the financial impact those decisions will have on the company. “Each product has resource requirements, direct costs, and revenues. As a non-technical product owner, your unique selling point could be applying your thorough understanding of business principles to relate the product to the overarching company mission, vision, and goals,” Rastogi says.
Our Scrum Product Owner Certified course can help you ease into this role. It provides an in-depth examination of the Scrum framework, which increases your job prospects as more companies adopt the Agile approach to project management.
Scrum Master
This role ensures the effective facilitation of the Scrum framework across development teams. A Scrum Master serves a business by fostering a culture of collaboration and communication between team members. They differ from a PO because they don’t interact with the client but focus on streamlining internal processes by managing the relationship within the Scrum team and between developers and the PO. Some of the primary responsibilities of the Scrum Master include:
- Directing daily stand-ups
- Guiding sprint planning meetings
- Training the team on Scrum principles
- Embodying behaviors and attitudes that increase team productivity
Simplilearn lists teamwork, coaching ability, effective communication, and negotiation as some of the top soft skills necessary to succeed in this role. Jeremy Jarell, an Agile coach and author, suggests adapting your communication style to various situations and individual preferences. Doing so can help ease team members feeling skeptical about attending the multiple ceremonies or detailing the artifacts necessary to carry out Scrum. “You need to communicate their value in a way that resonates with each team member, so everyone is on board with fully participating in the framework,” he says.
This approach carries over to successfully setting the short-term goals of each Sprint. Remember, it always goes back to helping the team understand the value of each action so they are motivated to meet those deliverables by the end of a Sprint.
The last and likely most important soft skill of being a successful Scrum Master is having a clear and continuous understanding of each step involved in delivering an increment of a product to market and how all processes fit together. “It doesn’t mean knowing every line of code used to bring a product to life or the specific nuances of each step of the product’s deployment pipeline,” Jarell says. “It’s just understanding how each step of that process fits together and how changes to one step can affect other steps.”
©TatvaSoft
Equipping yourself with this knowledge helps to avoid what Martin Fowler, a software developer, author, and international public speaker, refers to as Flaccid Scrum: the Scrum Master is unaware of the internal quality of the software but continues to add new features that are difficult to incorporate leading to increasing technical debt.
Our Scrum Master Certified Training is designed to equip you with enough technical know-how to leverage the soft skills necessary to ensure successful and continuous product delivery.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is about learning how people and technology work and then protecting both. While hacking and breaking into things are integral skills in the industry, so is a strong desire to continuously learn how technology works and a keenness for playing. Lance Spitzner, a senior instructor at the SANS Institute, says this is because a growing number of fields in the industry are less focused on solving technical problems in favor of human ones.
Cybersecurity is constantly changing and evolving in response to new technologies, threats, and challenges, so adaptability is essential. Say you’re an IT security analyst in charge of planning and carrying out security measures to protect an organization’s data. Suppose your company gets hit by a ransomware attack.
In that case, you’ll need to quickly assess the situation, develop a plan to contain the threat, and implement it effectively
– says Hameed R., a security engineer with over 11 years of experience in complex IT systems.
If you want to strengthen your adaptability skills, he suggests being open to learning new things or taking on new responsibilities regardless of how trivial or intimidating they seem. Commit to seeing these tasks through, then adjust your approach as needed. Doing so can help you cultivate an infinite capacity for rolling with the punches, which is essential to handling whatever comes your way in the dynamic world of cybersecurity, Hameed says.
Hameed also suggests understanding the ins and outs of network security. This includes the policies, processes, and practices your organization employs to prevent, detect, and monitor threats.
Our PECB ISO/IEC 27001 Introduction course is a great starter for anyone looking to understand the basic concepts of information security management. A level of security and awareness training can help you teach employees how to spot and report phishing attempts. Moreover, knowing how to implement basic security measures like firewalls to block malicious traffic helps ease your understanding of more technical concepts should you choose to develop those skills.
©AirforceMaterialCommand
Hameed says that an aptitude for communication is also essential, as you’ll need to convey technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences. Whether that’s a report for executives, explaining the last threat to a colleague, or sharing a vulnerability you just found, the ability to clearly and effectively share the details of this information, including what steps to take to remedy the situation, is crucial. Hameed suggests learning how to adapt your communication style to meet the needs of your audience, as this reduces the risk of misinterpretation. “Honing your communication skills allows you to collaborate better with others, solve problems more efficiently, and protect your organization from cyber threats,” Hameed says.
Starting or moving up in the tech industry can be intimidating if you feel you need more technical know-how. However, there is a plethora of soft skills you can leverage to land a job in the tech industry, especially since many value the perspective and insights of someone with different industry backgrounds.
Email us at talkagile@agileseventeen.com if you have any more questions or queries about how to leverage non-technical skills to build a career in tech.
