engineering manager career development plan worksheet

This is a template for Engineering Managers to think about building their careers in the direction they’re interested in. It blends a lot of what I’ve seen successfully at companies I’ve worked at. I will continue to edit/modify it over time.

This relies heavily on Career Development Plans

Engineering CDP Worksheet

Manager: Draft start: Latest Update:

Questions to help prompt Focus Area generation

1. What motivates you in your role day-to-day?
2. What motivates you every day at [COMPANY]?
3. What are your greatest strengths that drive results in your role?
4. What is your greatest strength as it relates to your Growth Guide?
5. Where do you want to improve the most?
6. How would these improvements impact you, your team, and [COMPANY]?
7. What’s your next career goal at [COMPANY]?
8. What is needed for you to achieve that goal?
9. What am I great at?
10. What do I want to be known for?
11. What do I not need to be great at?
12. What motivates me?

Long-term Goals

• 1 year
• 2 year
• 5 year

Current Responsibilities

Also indicate any of these that you would like to hand off. …

Current Skills

Align with your manager on your performance level for each of the growth guide skills over the past 6 months:

* Based on discussion with your manager. Does not guarantee performance review outcomes.

Focus Areas

Write down the 1-3 specific skills that you want to focus on in the next ~2 rolling quarters.

• [Skill 1]
• …

Motivating questions to ask yourself:

• Which skills are most important to reaching your long-term vision above?
  • Which skills need the most growth from where you are today to help you achieve your long-term vision?
  • Are there additional skills or areas of growth not covered by the growth guide skills to help you achieve your vision?
• What opportunities for impact have you and your manager identified on your team? How does that influence the skills you’ll want to focus on?

Development Goals Next 2 Quarters: Q<x

Development goals are concrete goals that help you grow in the focuses that you’ve identified.

For each skill, there would ideally be (i) clear next steps and (ii) clear ways your manager can help you develop in that direction. It’s okay to be high-level or vague at first — we will make these clear and concrete over 1-1 discussions, before we finalize goals.