Skip to main content

Beyond Sitecore Skills: What Truly Makes a Great Developer

In the world of Sitecore development, I often meet many professionals who are certified, highly experienced, and even recognized as MVPs. While their Sitecore knowledge is impressive, what surprises me is how often they lack basic software engineering fundamentals. This gap becomes obvious in real-world projects — especially when deadlines loom or post-launch support begins.



Sitecore Can Get You the Job, But It Won’t Keep the Client Happy

Knowing Sitecore well can definitely help you land a job. But what really earns client trust — and long-term success — is the quality of your deliverables and the value you bring to their business.

As a developer, you're not just building a website. You're building the digital face of a brand. First impressions matter — your work could help the client grow their reputation or even drive new business. The software you create is part of something that may have taken years of hard work to establish.

So how can you go from being a good Sitecore developer to a great one? Here are a few qualities that truly make a difference:

1. Understand the Business Problem First

If your client has invested in a Sitecore license, it's because they want to solve specific content management problems. They’re not concerned with how many technologies you know — they care about whether you can help them simplify and scale their content operations.

Before writing a single line of code, take time to understand:

  • What problem is this feature solving?

  • How will the content team use it?

  • Is there a simpler or smarter way to approach this?

A deep understanding of the requirement is the foundation of good software.

2. Use Sitecore Features the Right Way

Sitecore is packed with powerful features — but they're only useful if used correctly. Too often, I see developers misusing or completely ignoring key features like:

  • Template field sources

  • Item bucketing

  • Branch templates

  • Workflows

When you skip or misuse these, it leads to complex content structures, frustrated authors, and a false impression that Sitecore isn’t user-friendly. Learn these features well, and implement them with purpose.

3. Test Your Work Thoroughly

Many developers rush through development, especially near deadlines. Unfortunately, some barely test what they build — running one or two test cases and calling it done.

That’s a risky habit.

  • Every component should be tested against multiple use cases.

  • Think about edge cases and failure scenarios.

  • Don’t wait for QA or content authors to find your bugs.

Own the quality of your code. Test it like you’re the end user.

4. Don’t Just Implement – Improvise

Yes, your job is to implement requirements. But great developers go beyond that. If you see a better approach based on your experience, speak up. Suggest improvements. Recommend reusable components or smarter workflows.

These small suggestions can have a huge impact on:

  • Author experience

  • Long-term maintainability

  • Business outcomes

Clients appreciate developers who act like partners — not just coders.

5. The Real Work Begins After Go-Live

Many developers think their job ends when the site goes live. In reality, that’s when the true challenges begin. Once the site is in use:

  • Different content types get uploaded

  • Authors with varying skill levels start using it

  • Unexpected issues start popping up

You can avoid many of these issues by thinking ahead:

  • Is the interface intuitive for authors?

  • Are common mistakes accounted for?

  • Is there enough documentation or training?

Build with the business user in mind, and you’ll reduce headaches for everyone post-launch.

Final Thoughts

Being a great Sitecore developer isn’t just about knowing Sitecore. It’s about thinking like a software engineer, solving real problems, and delivering lasting value.

Whether you’re just starting out or already experienced, focus on the fundamentals:

  • Understand the “why” behind each requirement

  • Use the platform’s features wisely

  • Own the quality of your code

  • Collaborate, suggest, and improve

  • Think beyond deployment

That’s how you go from being a Sitecore developer — to being an indispensable partner to your client’s success. 

If you need suggestions or second - opinion of a Sitecore Technology MVP for free on your Sitecore implementation, DM me. I can help you get the value out of your Sitecore investment while building Sitecore brand value :)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

POPULAR POSTS

Sitecore PowerShell Script to create all language versions for an item from en version

  We have lots of media items and our business wants to copy the data from en version of media item to all other language versions defined in System/Languages. This ensures that media is available in all the languages. So, we created the below powershell script to achieve the same -  #Get all language versions defined in System/Languages $languages = Get-ChildItem /sitecore/System/Languages -recurse | Select $_.name | Where-Object {$_.name -ne "en"} | Select Name #Ensuring correct items are updated by comparing the template ID  $items = Get-ChildItem -Path "/sitecore/media library/MyProjects" -Recurse | Where-Object {'<media item template id>' -contains $_.TemplateID} #Bulk update context to improve performance New-UsingBlock (New-Object Sitecore.Data.BulkUpdateContext) { foreach($item in $items){    foreach($language in $languages){ $languageVersion = Get-Item -Path $item.Paths.Path -Language $language.Name #Check if language versi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Export Sitecore media library files to zip using SPE

If you ever require to export Sitecore media files to zip (may be to optimize them), SPE (Sitecore Powershell Extension) has probably the easiest way to do this for you. It's as easy as the below 3 steps -  1. Right click on your folder (icons folder in snap)>Click on Scripts> Click on Download 2. SPE will start zipping all the media files placed within this folder. 3. Once zipping is done, you will see the Download option in the next screen. Click Download Zip containing the media files within is available on your local machine. You can play around with the images now. Hope this helps!! Like and Share ;)
Post a Comment
Read more

Make Sitecore instance faster using Roslyn Compiler

When we install the Sitecore instance on local, the first load is slow. After each code deploy also, it takes a while for the Sitecore instance to load and experience editor to come up. For us, the load time for Sitecore instance on local machines was around 4 minutes. We started looking for ways to minimize it and found that if we update our Web.config to use Roslyn compiler and include the relevant Nugets into the project, our load times will improve. We followed the simple steps - Go to the Project you wish to add the NuGet package and right click the project and click 'Manage NuGet Packages'. Make sure your 'Package Source' is set to nuget.org and go to the 'Browse' Tab and search Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform. Install whichever version you desire, make sure you note which version you installed. You can learn more about it  here . After installation, deploy your project, make sure the Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.d...
1 comment
Read more

Experience of a first time Sitecore MVP

The Journey I have been working in Sitecore for almost 10 years now. When I was a beginner in Sitecore, I was highly impressed by the incredible community support. In fact, my initial Sitecore learning path was entirely based on community written blogs on Sitecore. During a discussion with my then technology lead Neeraj Gulia , he proposed the idea that I should start giving back to developer community whenever I get chance. Just like I have been helped by many developers via online blogs, stackoverflow etc., I should also try to help others. Fast forward a few years and I met  Nehemiah Jeyakumar  (now an MVP). He had a big archive of his technical notes in the form Sitecore blogs. I realized my first blog dont have to be perfect and it can be as simple as notes to a specific problem for reference in future. That's when I probably created my first blog post on Sitecore. At that time, I didn't knew about the Sitecore MVP program. Over the years, I gained more confidence to writ...
2 comments
Read more

Clean Coding Principles in CSharp

A code shall be easy to read and understand. In this post, I am outlining basic principles  about clean coding after researching through expert recommended books, trainings and based on my experience. A common example to start with is a variable declaration like - int i  The above statement did not clarify the purpose of variable i. However,  the same variable can be declared as -  int pageNumber The moment we declared the variable as int pageNumber, our brain realized that the variable is going to store the value for number of pages. We have set the context in our brain now and it is ready to understand what the code is going to do next with these page numbers. This is one of the basic advantages of clean coding. Reasons for clean coding -  • Reading clean code is easier - Every code is revisited after certain amount of time either by the same or different developer who created it. In both the cases, if the code is unclean, its difficult to understand and u...
Post a Comment
Read more