Create a development plan

What this achieves

A development plan turns “get better at this” into a target role, a timeline, and a set of goals somebody can finish. It is where the gap between what a person has and what a role requires becomes a list of things to do.

Required role: Administrator, Manager, or Employee. An employee can create a plan for themselves; administrators and managers can create one for somebody else.

Steps

Go to Career & Growth → Development Plans.
Select Create Plan.
Enter the Plan Title.

Example: Path to Senior Engineer.
Set the Employee. Left empty, it defaults to your own profile.
Choose the Target Role.
Enter a Description of what the plan is for.
Under Timeline, set the Start Date and the Target End Date.
Save the plan, then add its goals.

The fields

Option	Description
Plan Title	What the plan is called. Required.
Employee	Who the plan is for. Required. Defaults to your own profile when left empty.
Target Role	The job profile the plan is aimed at. This is what makes the plan specific rather than general.
Description	The objectives, in your own words.
Start Date	When the plan begins.
Target End Date	When it is meant to be finished.

The two dates are not decoration. Goal target dates and milestone due dates are validated against them: a date outside the plan’s timeline is rejected with a message naming the plan’s start or end.

Example: a plan for James Whitfield at HC Corp UK Ltd running 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027 cannot hold a milestone due in May 2027. Either the milestone moves or the plan’s end date does.

Starting from a template instead

From Template on the development plans list applies a template you have already built, cloning its goals and milestones into an editable plan. Use it when the same growth path is being walked by more than one person.

Letting Humavera suggest the milestones

The create form offers to generate a plan from the employee’s role, skills, and target. Select Try AI, then complete the sheet.

Option	Description
Employee	Who the suggestions are for. Required.
Timeframe (months)	How long the plan should cover. Required.
Target Role	The role to aim the suggestions at. Optional.
Additional context	Areas to emphasise, constraints, or learning preferences. Optional.

Select Generate. The suggested milestones appear under AI Suggestions, each with the weeks it is expected to span, and nothing is saved yet. Read them, then either Save Plan with Suggestions or Discard.

This is a proposal for a person to decide on, not an assessment of anyone. A suggestion that does not match what you know about the person is wrong, and the interface is built to let you say so before anything is stored.

Generating suggestions consumes AI credits. The interface shows the cost before you generate and confirms how many credits were used afterwards.

Example: generating a twelve-month plan for James Whitfield returns milestones aimed at a senior engineering profile. Olivia Bennett reads them, discards the two that duplicate work he has already done, and saves the rest.

What a goal can be tied to

Goals are added to a plan after it exists. A goal carries a title, a category, a priority, a target date, and milestones — and it can be linked to a skill, a competency, or a course.

Linking matters more than it looks. A goal linked to a skill or a competency with a target level completes on its own when the person reaches that level, which the goal form states as it is set. A goal that is only text has to be closed by hand.

Example: a goal at HC Corp linked to a skill at target level 4 closes itself when James Whitfield’s assessed level reaches 4. The same goal written as free text stays open until somebody remembers to close it.

What happens next

A saved plan appears on the My Plans list for its owner and on Team Plans for their manager. From there it is worked rather than written: goals are completed, milestones are ticked off, progress is shown as a ratio, and a manager marks the plan as reviewed at whatever cadence you keep. Where goals are linked to skills or courses, progress arrives from assessment and learning rather than from anyone updating the plan.