Individual Development Plan

Career development is one of the most important aspects for software engineers’ career with a company. Individual Development Plan (IDP) is an effective framework and foundation to support career development for software development professional at various levels.

According to U.S. Office of Personnel Management, IDP is a framework to assist employees in career and personal development. Its primary purpose is to help employees to reach short and long-term career goals, as well as improve job performance. However, it is:

• NOT a performance evaluation tool
• NOT a one-time activity
• NOT generic for every employee
• NOT handed to the employee by the manager

Today, many organizations run eNPS survey on a quarterly, bi-annually or annually basis. Career development (including learning and development) is one of the most common topics brought up by employees. Senior management team should invest in employees on their needs of career development. According to Pew Research Center, majorities of workers who quit a job in 2021 said low pay (63%), no opportunities for advancement (63%) and feeling disrespected at work (57%) were reasons why they quit.

IDP can be strategically used for addressing the lack of opportunities for career advancement. The benefits of using IDP are:

1. It is a customized development plan for each employee. No two employees have the exact same plan.
2. It is mutually agreed plan with the manager on development needs. The manager has a vested interest to support to employee to be successful in career development.
3. It provides a clear career development roadmap on what the development goals are and how to get there.
4. It is a systematic approach to keep track of career development progress.
5. When an IDP framework is adopted in an organization, it becomes a standardized tool for employee and manager(s) to discuss development using common language without the need to restarting the employee development conversation all over again when there is a change of manager.

The process of writing a good IDP is a guided process. We can break it down the processes into 3 sections.

Section 1: Self Reflection

This is the section where employee spend the time to reflect on the following questions:

1. What are your major accomplishments for the last 6 months?
2. What problems and constraints influenced your work progression during the last 6 months?
3. In your current position, what additional skills will help you to do your job more effectively?

The Self Reflection section guide the employee to reflect back how did the employee performed in the current position. Note that this is not a performance review tool. The employee should answer these questions as honest as possible without the worries of being penalized in order to develop a meaningful development plan.

Section 2: Identify

The questions in Section 1 are relatively visible in job outcomes. Section 2: Identify focus on the abstract aspects that the employee feel strongly about. Questions as following:

1. What are you great at? Do you have a natural aptitude for something that you can capitalize on or makes you valuable to your team?
2. What do you love doing? What are you passionate about?
3. Where do you want to be? What do you want your career to look like in 1 year, 3 year and beyond with the company?

Development should focus on the employee strength, passion and career aspiration. Sometimes, it might not be obvious to the employees themselves on what they are good at because they those abilities come so naturally. This is where getting the manager’s involvement can be very enlightening.

Manager can provide valuable feedback to the employees on question #1 as the manager usually observe more than one employee on similar role. On question #2, the employee can think about what are some of the activities that the employees do not mind spending the weekend to do even if it is not asked by the manager. Question #3 is the personal aspiration for the employee. Think about who are some of the role model that the employee admire within (or even outside) of the organization as a reference point.

Section 3: Brainstorm

This is the section for the employee and manager sit together to brainstorm for actionable steps for the employees to take to achieve the goals and aspiration identified earlier.

It is very beneficial to get the manager’s involvement here as the manager is usually someone who has been there and done that. For example, in MoneyLion we have our Engineering Managers to drive the IDP conversation. All the engineers (backend, frontend, mobile, QA) in a team report into the same Engineering Manager. The Engineering Managers that we promote or hire are folks with rock solid (10 years and above) software development experience. They have been a junior engineer, mid level, senior, lead themselves before eventually becoming a manager. The Engineering Managers who have been through the career development journey themselves have good context on how to support and guide the engineer to their next level of career growth.

We practice a 70–20–10 model in IDP:

• 70% focusing on the job experience. It is important for the employee spend majority of the effort with hands-on exposure in the job to develop the desired areas. Manager plays a vital role in supporting the employee on identifying opportunities and making room for employee to develop and excel in the job.
• 20% focusing on informal learning. For example regular coaching conversation with manager, recurring mentoring sessions with senior members in the organization, focused discussion with peers, reading books, white papers, articles, attending conferences, workshops, tech talks, working on pet projects, joining a book club in the company, taking part in knowledge sharing session (attending or presenting) and signing up to online learning platform such as AWS Training Events, Udemy Short Courses, Cousera Courses, Eduonix ($36 per year), ACM Membership (including O’Reilly & Skillsoft for $40 per year).
• 10% focusing on formal learning. For example taking an external certification exam, completing organization in-house certification program (if any) and continuing tertiary education such as getting a master’s degree. Successful completing of formal learning does not guarantee a good career progression but the learning it almost never go wasted in the employee’s development.

This is an example of matrix used for identifying development goals in Section 3 used in MoneyLion:

Section 4: Commit

Once a development plan is constructed, it’s time for the employee to commit into carrying out the plan. Employees him/herself will need to be committed in the IDP. The manager plays a supportive and facilitating role. The manager will not be policing the employee is achieving the goals. The employee is ultimately accountable for the accomplishment. The employee should proactively reach out to the manager to discuss adjustments or updates to the IDP as situation changes.

The recommended timeframe for employee to reach out to manager to discuss on the progress of IDP is quarterly basis. However depending on the size and progress of the goal, the timeframe can and should be adjusted accordingly. Employees are recommended to make updates to the IDP on quarterly basis and make a thorough revisit of the entire plan on an annually basis to ensure the plan remains relevant.

Summary

IDP is a powerful foundation to support career progression, learning and development and enhancing performance at work. It is a systematic approach to support the professional development of an employee in the organization. Organizations that are serious on developing the talents should make use of IDP to provide the development and growth opportunities for the employees.