The Ability to communicate effectively, especially between teams of different disciplines, and converting business objectives into technical requirements, and technical limitations into layman’s terms.

My experience in each discipline greatly aids with this, alongside an extensive history in educational roles.
At QA Apprenticeships I coordinated between software apprentices and their employers to ensure their programmes aligned with the company’s business requirements.
At Leonardo Helicopters I often had to coordinate between product owners and development teams, projecting development timelines and limitations based on what the owners wanted to achieve, and what the teams could technically accomplish, and the resources required.
Both as a Skills Coach for QA and a Tutor and workshop host at Creative Genius, I regularly run sessions for cohorts of different technical backgrounds trying to work together on the same projects, or to the same specifications, and I tailor my explanations to the ability and background of each person involved.

Resource management that extends beyond just budget and time allocation, but also what skills a team possesses, what is needed for the project, and therefore what is missing.

This goes hand-in-hand with planning and prioritisation, where I tend to implement the Agile methodology within the Scrum framework and place tasks within a MoSCoW table to help keep a project like Battle Drive and Silent Symphony on track.
For the sake of my cohort at QA Apprentices, I needed to manage their schedules and ensure they could complete their job’s responsibilities, learning objectives, classes and exams, all within the timeline of the apprenticeship
Running classes and workshops where there are clear learning objectives and a limited window in which to cover all of the content, is all about understanding the relationship between productivity, information overload and understanding a topic over just memorising it.

Risk Assessment and problem solving are key skills, when looking towards the future of development and anticipating obstacles, but also putting in place solutions and implementing systems to optimise productivity.

Understanding the relationship between productive hours and how to allocate work using Effort Points really helps with large projects, or when working on multiple projects at once. Like knowing one only had about 2 hours per weekday to work on a project like Battle Drive, and realistically 6 hours on a Saturday or Sunday, so assigning tasks in accordance with how long they should take to ensure minimum disruption.
Anticipating the impact of holidays, annual leave, overlapping projects and parallel deadlines helped me to more accurately calculate how long it would take to complete projects at Leonardo Helicopters, with either a need to prioritise tasks before disruptions could occur, or to ensure stakeholders understood that failing to do so would extend the project duration by a few months at a time.
Sometimes you also need to anticipate a breakdown in communication, where I’ve had to ensure regular follow up conversations, meetings and reminders tailored for individuals who demonstrate a history of forgetfulness or misinterpretation of requirements. Knowing that it’s better to have a solution in place rather than simply having someone to blame when things go wrong is key to prioritising a projects’ success over simply covering oneself.

Safeguarding and health and safety practices are core knowledge any leader should be well versed in.

It’s something I’ve covered a lot when working with young people and students and those with disabilities, with my time at QA Apprenticeships really ensuring that we got regular up to date training to ensure healthy and safe working environments.