Part of my brief at Elcom is to look after all the developers (ie people management). This is something I enjoy, especially when seeing developers grow and improve themselves.
During November and December I sat down with each of my staff and started preparing their career plans. It is their responsibility to work out their goals and aspirations, it is my job to facilitate that happening (within reason of course).
The process involves preparation by the developer (approx 1 hour), then a chat with me (1-2 hours) and then some updating of notes, consolidation of ideas, etc.
During the chat we cover everything, including likes and dislikes, books, training, aims and goals, money, gripes, and then finish with some KPIs.
I thought others might be interested in how we conducted the process. Attached is the Career Plan brief, which outlines the method. I’ve included my original one, which has a few problems.
Based on feedback from the team during the process, I will be updating it to fix a few things. For example, the doc has various time frames that it asks about which can be confusing, however my point is this: when setting goals we often over-estimate what we can achieve in 1 year, but under-estimate what we can achieve in 3 years. So we need to have short term and longer term goals continually in mind.
The file is a Word document. Feel free to take it, improve it, use it if useful to you and your role. I’m open to any comments and suggestions you have…
(Here’s the books we have ordered so far, here’s the ones still to be ordered)
