Purpose

Individual development plans are designed to provide a clear vision as to the individual competencies and capabilities that a team member hopes to develop during the course of a given time period or project. The plan is used by management to ensure that the employee is taking clear steps toward specific professional goals and objectives. It is used by team members as a guide or reminder of specific activities they intend to pursue.

Application

The individual development plan is generally applied at a career landmark, either an annual review or the beginning of a new set of roles and responsibilities. At the beginning of a project, the individual development plan provides insight on how the project will benefit the team member, rather than the other way around. It gives both team members and managers a clear understanding of what specific competencies will evolve during the project life cycle.

The plan is normally used at the beginning of the team member’s participation in the project and is reviewed on a regular schedule. It should reflect the goals or competencies to be achieved, the means to achieve them, and the time frame in which they will be achieved. Depending on the organization, the costs associated with any professional development may be documented here as well.

Content

The personal development plan will include both general statements regarding goals and objectives, as well as specific behaviors aimed at achieving those objectives.

1.0 Competencies/Objectives

The competencies or objectives are those capabilities that either the team member or management or both have determined are appropriate and critical to personal and professional growth. The appropriate competencies may be determined by extended study or analysis (as in the Defense Systems Management College’s Program Manager Competency Model, created in 1989) or by virtue of organizational need or individual professional curiosity and zeal.

The activities are those developmental activities (training, cross-training, research, and so on) that provide guidance in the competencies. The specific objectives of the activities should reflect the objectives as described in Section 1.0.

Either a window of time or a “no-later-than” date is documented for each activity. This ensures a common understanding of the relative urgency of the competency or objective and a sense of the development’s relative value to other activities.

Some organizations need to have a cost structure for individual development programs to determine if they are getting a sufficient return for their investment. The costs may be documented in monetary values, individual resource hours, or both.

Approaches

The development plan may evolve through an iterative approach, if the organization wants to engage the team member in its creation. In some cases, the team members will identify specific professional goals and then compare their personal objectives with those of their management. If the two are reasonably close, the team member’s approach may be adopted. If there is some distance between the two visions, the team member’s perspectives may be incorporated with those of management to create a list of mutually accepted competencies or objectives.

Ideally, it should be possible to document what progress is being made toward competency development at regular intervals. Because the objectives are clearly stated, any progress toward their accomplishment should be easy to identify.

Considerations

Development plans can be powerful tools if they are achievable and well designed. Good development plans will have some objectives that can be achieved in a relatively short (2- to 4-month) time span. Other objectives may take years to achieve. A balance should be struck between the different classes of objectives.

The objectives may be tied to incentives, financial and otherwise. If they are, the incentives should be clearly delineated with the competencies, but care should be taken to avoid providing incentives only for those objectives achieved by a certain date. Performance objectives should add value whenever they occur within an individual’s career.