The Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to transform the digital landscape in 2018. Here CXM presents six skills IoT developers need to be successful in this pioneering field.
1. Ability to work in a team/listen and cooperate
The Internet of Things requires a very broad set of skills. These include: electronics for sensors, actors, and SOCs; wireless transmission; field bus protocols; messaging and networking; data centre technologies including data storage, AI, machine learning, API management, mobile/web UIs, and legacy application integration; end-to-end security; and much more. No one person can have all these skills at once, so be ready to collaborate with others.
2. Being open to innovation and change
With large data volumes, infrastructure management, scalability, performance, security and so forth, IoT is a complex beast, and a very fast running one as well. Plan for changes wherever you can – what is impossible today might be the new de facto standard tomorrow. On the subject of standards, have a look at existing and emerging standards in all IoT areas (see skill 1) and your specific application area.
3. Business orientation
Always keep the customer in mind. Everything you do should support a specific customer need. Stay focussed on the customer and make intensive use of methods, technologies, and strategies that enable you to be faster in delivering to them, such as design thinking, DevOps, container platforms, CI, CD, and rollout strategies such as canary or blue-green.
4. Being architecturally minded while staying agile
There are many IoT offerings out there that promise immediate results, but take some time to think about the mid and longer term consequences of using a particular solution. Step back and consider the architecture, the lock-ins, the security risks or limitations that you might trade in for a quick solution or platform.
5. Familiarity with open source projects and commercial and enterprise use of open source products
Be aware that skill 2 applies especially to the incredible pace of innovation that comes with open source projects and communities. Most groundbreaking technologies we see these days either started as an open source project or became one after a short incubation phase, such as Apache Hadoop for big data or the Android mobile operating system.
So be sure to understand how to work with open source projects and how to get stable enterprise-ready solutions as you approach the production of your IoT offering.
6. Open-mindedness and curiosity
Read everything about IoT – or at least try to. This can be exhausting but is absolutely worth it, as we are living in exciting times!