Research based Cross-disciplinary Skills list

This page presents a research-based list of cross-disciplinary skills required by computing professionals, which can be used to inform undergraduate degree programs. 

The skills on this list will also be relevant to other disciplines. However, their practical application could look different for different disciplinary tasks. For example, the way you write a requirements document is different from the way you write a user guide.

Because cross-disciplinary skills take time to develop and look different for different tasks and contexts, we recommend selecting those most applicable to your students and using a spiral model to promote them throughout your program.

• Collaboration and Teamwork
  • Navigating social dynamics
  • Building relationships
  • Coordinating with others
  • Cross-functional / interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Knowledge sharing
  • Giving, receiving, and applying constructive feedback
• Communication Skills
  • Written communication, including, but not limited to, various forms of technical writing
  • Verbal communication, which includes clear oral communication, active listening, asking insightful questions, and communicating effectively about your work
  • Non-verbal communication
  • Visual communication
  • Presentation skills
  • Tailoring the message, which includes understanding how a message will be perceived, tailoring language to the audience, persuasive communication, predicting audience questions, and appropriately communicating what people do not want to hear
  • Succinct Communication
• Lifelong Learning Skills
  • Self-directed learning, which involves setting learning goals and selecting and combining learning methods
  • Learning from experience, through tinkering, learning from prior experience, and learning from teaching
  • Learning from failure
  • Learning from colleagues and subject matter experts
  • Information and digital literacy
  • AI literacy
• Mentorship
• Problem solving
  • Complex, ill-structured problem solving
  • Collaborative problem solving
• Critical & Analytical Thinking
• Decision Making & Making Judgements
  • Assessing technical aspects
  • Assessing business aspects
  • Considering customers’ needs
  • Considering legal and ethical aspects
  • Considering others’ competencies
  • Knowing when to escalate or ask for assistance
  • Balancing cost, time, and workload
• Project Management for Individual Contributors
  • Goal setting, planning, and organization
  • Prioritization
  • Time management
  • Working on large and multiple projects

Note: for a list of skills for technical managers, see Duan et al (2023), referenced below. We recommend the items above for consideration for undergraduate programs.

About the List

This list of cross-disciplinary was generated based on a Systematic Literature Review and interviews of computing professionals and managers, as part of the DEAPening Employer-Academia Partnership project.  Related literature is included in the list of references below.

Janakiraman, S., Sabin, M., Exter, E., Duan, S. (2025). Preliminary results from a systematic literature review on computing competencies valued in the workplace. ACM Transactions on Computing Education. doi: 10.1145/3785359

Duan, S., Exter, M., Tagare, D., Sabin, M., & Janakiraman, S. (2023). Essential competencies for computing managers: Skills and dispositions. Education and Information Technologies, 29(2). 2539-2578. doi:10.1007/s10639-023-11869-4

Exter, M., Yakut, N., Tagare, D., Sabin, S., (2025, November). Work In Progress: How do computing professionals and faculty rank the importance of dispositions and cross-disciplinary skills. In Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). Nashville, TN. doi: 10.1109/FIE63693.2025.11328210

Exter, M. E., Tagare, D., & Sabin, M. (2024, March).  Develop a Competency-Based Curriculum that Purposefully integrates computing skills, cross-disciplinary skills, and dispositions. In SIGCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 55^th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Portland, OR. doi:10.1145/3626253.3633410  [workshop]