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Ability to work in a team:
Today, the art of software development has adopted
the modular approach, an approach with increasing use of OOPS technology.
Working in a team has become essential for small as well as large projects.
Professionals who can be geniuses but are unable to work in a team are of not much
use to the industry. And any team requires a good leader. Therefore, the ability to
manage a team also becomes very important. It is a well-known fact that today Indian
industry lacks project managers.
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Appreciation and achieving quality parameters:
An ideal software professional
should be always aiming to use the latest technologies like CASE etc., and implement
formal methodologies of software development. He should also be quality conscious
in development of the product.
The above characteristics may sound very ideal, but then in today’s cut-throat
competition, these are fundamental requirements of any good software professional.
To some extent, graduates from IIT, REC, and some MCA programs do offer some
of these characteristics, but being limited in number are grabbed immediately by
software companies and large end-user organizations. The cream is absorbed by the
software export industry, leaving the rest for the domestic sector. A recent survey
conducted by the World Bank-funded study on International Software Strategies
reconfirmed the general fear that less than two percent of manpower employed by
the software export industry comes from private training institutes. This one
statement clearly sums up the sad state of affairs in private training institutes.
Of course, it would be wrong to generalize and attribute all faults to private training
institutes. But talking to a cross section of CEOs and managers of software
companies, one clearly feels that most private training institutes need to change
their curriculum, insist on higher qualifications for their faculty and provide
experience in software development. This can be done either by having close links
with software companies where students can gain experience or having an in-house
development center.
If these minimum criteria can be met by the private training institutes, the quality
of manpower for the computer software industry could tremendously increase. This
could provide a much needed boost to the Indian software sector.
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