Track and review a development plan

What this achieves

A development plan is only worth having if somebody looks at it after it is written. This is the routine that keeps one alive — adding goals, watching progress arrive, recording that you reviewed it, and closing it when it is done.

Required role: Administrator or Manager. An employee can see and work their own plan.

Steps

Go to Career & Growth → Development Plans.
Open the Team Plans tab and select Open Plan on the plan you are working.
Select Add Goal and complete the goal form.
Under Milestones, break the goal into checkpoints and save it.
Select Review, add Notes, and select Mark as reviewed.
Use Activate, Pause, Resume, Complete, or Cancel as the plan’s state changes.

Where a plan appears

Option	Description
My Plans	Plans you own.
Team Plans	Plans belonging to your direct reports.
All Plans	Every plan in the company. Administrators only.

Each row shows the plan, its target role, its status, its progress, and when it was last reviewed. Last Review is the column to scan: a plan nobody has reviewed in months is the normal failure of development planning, and it is visible here before anyone has to ask.

The goal form

Option	Description
Title	What the goal is.
Category	How the goal is classified, such as skill building, certification, or project.
Priority	Low, medium, high, urgent, or critical.
Target date	When the goal should be met. Must fall inside the plan’s timeline.
Linked skill	A skill and a target level. The goal completes on its own when the skill reaches that level.
Linked competency	A competency and a target level, with the same automatic completion.
Linked course	A course that serves the goal.
Milestones	Smaller checkpoints inside the goal, each with its own due date.

Example: a goal for James Whitfield linked to a skill at target level 4 closes when his assessed level reaches 4. Nobody has to remember to close it, and nobody can close it early by claiming it is done.

Dates are held inside the plan

Goal target dates and milestone due dates have to sit inside the plan’s start and end dates. The form refuses anything outside and names the boundary it is enforcing, showing the plan’s timeline as it does.

That constraint is doing real work. A plan whose goals are due after it ends is a plan that was never going to finish.

Progress arrives rather than being entered

The plan header shows a goals-completed ratio, and each goal shows its milestone ratio. Where goals are linked to skills or competencies, that progress comes from assessment; where they are not, someone marks them complete.

A plan can carry an AI Progress Summary written from what the plan actually shows. It restates progress in a sentence for the person reading it — it does not judge whether the person is doing well, and it is not evidence for any decision about them.

Recording a review

Review opens the review panel, which names the plan being reviewed and takes optional Notes before Mark as reviewed.

The plan then shows when it was last reviewed and by whom. That line is what makes a review visible to anyone else who opens the plan later, including the employee.

Example: Olivia Bennett reviews James Whitfield’s plan after their monthly one-to-one and records what they agreed. The plan carries her name and the date, so the next conversation starts from what was actually said.

Plan statuses

Option	Description
Draft	Being written. Not yet in progress.
Active	In progress.
Paused	Deliberately stopped and expected to resume.
Completed	Finished.
Cancelled	Abandoned.

Complete is unavailable until every goal is completed or cancelled, and the interface says so when you hover it. That is deliberate: a plan cannot be closed over the top of goals nobody dealt with.

Use Pause rather than Cancel when someone is on long leave or has changed team mid-plan. Pausing keeps the goals; cancelling ends the plan.

What happens next

A completed plan stays on record with its goals, its milestones, and every review recorded against it. Where its goals were linked to skills or competencies, the assessments that closed them have already moved the person’s profile — which means their readiness against a target role moves too, and the plan’s original purpose can be checked rather than assumed.