For any IT specialist there is an opportunity to facilitate and accelerate his professional and career growth. A personal development plan is an effective help in this difficult task. How to compose it and apply it in practice - this material will tell.
Avoid procrastination
A personal plan for self-development allows you to clarify the goal and see a transparent, measurable and visual way to achieve it. The main objective of the plan is to prevent procrastination of the specialist's development. This behavior involves the postponement of important tasks and tasks leading to the achievement of growth. The reason is the illusion of the goal and the steps leading to its achievement. These factors hinder self-development and eliminate the career plan.
Consider obstacles
It is difficult to engage in self-development if you do not see a clear goal for your growth. And even if you understand what level you want to achieve, without planning and real actions in this direction, this may remain a pipe dream. And even if you start moving towards your goal, you will encounter many obstacles on your way:
Loss of motivation. Faced with obstacles and not noticing his progress, the developer forgets why he wants to achieve the goal. As a result, he may refuse to make efforts to overcome difficulties and stop developing.
Lack of time. Often a programmer is so busy with work that he does not have enough strength and energy to engage in self-development. Realizing this, the developers abandon their development, reassuring themselves that for growth it is enough to solve the daily tasks set by the management.
The actual milestone is different from the target. Instead of making adjustments to his plan, the specialist continues to move along a previously conceived path that is no longer relevant.
Define a goal
To develop a development plan, you need to clearly understand the goal that you intend to achieve. The more accurately the goal is determined, the less will be its discrepancy with the actual result. For convenience and efficiency, the plan for achieving the goal is broken down into tasks, subtasks, and simple steps. All elements are tied to the time of their implementation. This is the way to achieve the goal is proposed by Maxim Dorofeev in his bestseller "Jedi Techniques".
Following the algorithm, first you need to decide on the goal of your development. To understand in which direction to move, study the available information about specialties and positions in the IT industry: computer engineering major
Range of tasks;
Salary level;
Area of responsibility;
Competence and knowledge.
Specialized resources such as Technology Online Courses can serve as a source of information . Study the forecasts of which IT trends will be promising this year, in 5-10 years. Analyze the collected information based on your desires, dispositions, competencies, knowledge, talents and resources. Choose the goal you want to achieve as you grow.
Choose a mentor
Once you have decided on the direction of your development goal, enlist the support of a mentor. An experienced specialist will act as a driver of your development, provided that he is periodically interested in success and corrects your development.
To successfully interact with a mentor, it is important to show that you are interested in your development and are ready to make efforts to achieve your goal. In this case, he will be much more willing to help you, devote more time and often give valuable recommendations.
It does not have to be a specialist who is moving in the same direction as you, he may well have an alternative vector of development.
In a situation where you cannot regularly interact with the teacher, take his model of behavior as a model. Gather information about how he achieved his success, find out about his life hacks, sources of development. Analyze the information gathered and apply it to yourself.
If the company has a shortage of specialists, you can refer to chats by directions in Telegram, as well as to specialized forums. Various events in the IT field: conferences, meetups, gather a huge number of experts from various fields and specializations, where you can also meet the future curator.
Use software
You can use any planning tool. The free Grow app is an excellent tool for creating a development plan for an IT specialist .
Using the program, select the level of development that you want to achieve. For example, you are middle and want to move up to senior level. The application will form for you a matrix of skills required to reach the senior level:
literature to read;
skills to be possessed;
what courses to attend.
The next step is to divide the plan into tasks linked by dates. Some companies require a promotion recommendation to advance to senior level. To do this, you need to pass an assessment (the process of assessing the developer's compliance with the requirements of the Global Competency Framework).
Turning to Grow , you can see that to complete the assessment you need:
study courses on new technologies;
improve team skills;
improve communication skills with the customer;
get a recommendation from fellow developers.
Using the Agile design method, we break these tasks into elementary subtasks and tie them to specific dates. At the next stage, we divide them into even smaller elements - time-bound iterations.
This approach makes it possible to realistically assess how much effort and time it will take to achieve the goal. This increases the chances of getting the desired result, as you realize how much time and effort it will take you to grow up to senior level.
Often times have to be set based on external circumstances. For example, earlier in the EPAM assessment it was possible to complete only a certain period of time. Setting a specific date allows you to get away from procrastination. If you do not complete the task on time, then there is a factor that distracts you and should be promptly eliminated. \
Keep motivated
A well-developed development plan allows you to see the progress of your development. This can help maintain your enthusiasm when a temporary setback stops you. She is not able to break, because you see the whole picture and observe your successful progress.
You will also be able to avoid creating overly optimistic plans that are not able to be completed by the selected date. If you are unable to achieve your goal every day, it makes sense to adjust the plan so that you can monitor progress once a week or even a month.
Feedback from peers is also a great tool to stay motivated. From the outside, mistakes that are made or opportunities that are missed are always better visible.
Unload time for development
It is also important to find the time that you have set aside for your development. To do this, you can contact the manager or find solutions to do it yourself. Situations can be different, but long-term work overloads will not allow you to develop and threaten professional burnout.
Update plan
The plan should be flexible and easily adapt to new data obtained during its implementation. This is due to the fact that the planned intermediate achievements will differ from the actual ones. Based on the results obtained, it is worth revising your plan and adapting your further development.
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