Career Development Plan Template
A forward-looking plan that maps an employee from their current role toward a future role, lateral or a promotion, through the skills and experiences a 70-20-10 mix builds. Longer-horizon than an IDP, and nothing like a PIP.
Reviewed by Abhijit Rao, AVP & Business Head, India
- Starts from an aspiration and a named target role, not the current job
- Maps the gap between the current role and what the target role demands
- Builds the gap closed with a 70-20-10 mix of experience, exposure and learning
- A readiness matrix that scores the person against the target role before a move
What is inside
- A forward-looking plan structure that maps a person from their current role toward a named future role, lateral or a promotion, rather than tuning the current job.
- A current-versus-target gap view, so the plan starts from the distance to the destination and not from a generic list of courses.
- A 70-20-10 action planner, so growth is built mostly from stretch work and exposure, with formal learning as the smaller tenth.
- A readiness matrix that scores the person against the target role across the competency areas a move actually depends on.
Who it is for
Anyone who has to plan what people learn, and answer for whether it landed.
- L&D and training teams
- People managers and team leads
- Heads of function and department
- HR business partners
- Compliance and risk teams
- Onboarding and enablement teams
- Operations and delivery leads
- COOs and HR directors
How to use this template in 4 steps
- Pick your format. Download the PDF to share, the Word file to edit, or the Excel file to work in live. All three are free.
- Make it yours. Adapt the sections, fields and wording to your team, roles and process so it fits how you actually work.
- Put it to work. Fill it in, circulate it to stakeholders for sign-off, or roll it out to your team.
- Track and improve. Review it on a set cadence and refine it as your goals, roles and priorities change.
What is inside
- A forward-looking plan structure that maps a person from their current role toward a named future role, lateral or a promotion, rather than tuning the current job.
- A current-versus-target gap view, so the plan starts from the distance to the destination and not from a generic list of courses.
- A 70-20-10 action planner, so growth is built mostly from stretch work and exposure, with formal learning as the smaller tenth.
- A readiness matrix that scores the person against the target role across the competency areas a move actually depends on.
This is a career-growth plan toward a future role, not an individual development plan for the current role and not a performance improvement plan. It is a starting structure to shape around your own career framework and progression criteria, not HR, legal or promotion-decision advice, so align it with your own people process before you use it to commit to a move.
The career development plan structure
The plan is built one career goal at a time. Each row maps a goal to a target role, the skills to build, the 70-20-10 actions that build them, a timeline and the support behind it. The current role sits next to the target role on every line, so the plan never loses sight of the gap it exists to close.
| Career goal | Current vs target role | Skills to build | Development actions (70-20-10) | Timeline | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Move into people management | Senior Analyst to Team Lead | Coaching, delegation, performance conversations. | 70: lead a small project team. 20: shadow a current manager. 10: first-time manager course. | 9 to 12 months | Manager and L&D |
| Step up within the function | Specialist to Senior Specialist | Advanced domain depth, mentoring, scoping. | 70: own a complex workstream end to end. 20: mentor a junior. 10: advanced certification. | 6 to 9 months | Function head |
| Lateral move to a new discipline | Support to Product Ops | Product sense, stakeholder work, data basics. | 70: run a cross-team pilot. 20: embed with product for a sprint. 10: product fundamentals. | 12 months | Both managers |
| Grow toward senior leadership | Team Lead to Head of Function | Strategy, commercial acumen, org influence. | 70: own a P&L line or function goal. 20: exposure to the leadership team. 10: leadership programme. | 18 to 24 months | Sponsor and L&D |
| Deepen technical mastery | Engineer to Staff Engineer | Architecture, technical leadership, mentoring. | 70: lead a system redesign. 20: review across teams. 10: architecture training. | 12 to 18 months | Eng leadership |
Mapping the skills a target role needs to the learning that builds them is how internal mobility becomes repeatable. When an LMS holds that skill-to-role map and tracks who is closing the gap, managers fill roles from inside instead of watching ready people leave for the title elsewhere.
Build the plan with this checklist
Seven checks that turn an ambition into a plan someone can actually act toward a move with. Tick items as you build yours, it stays in this browser. The download has the same list with an owner column.
- Aspiration agreed with the person, in their own wordsAspirationEvery plan
- A concrete target role defined, not just a directionTarget roleEvery plan
- The skills gap to the target role identifiedGapEvery plan
- 70-20-10 actions chosen, weighted to experienceActionsEvery plan
- A timeline and milestones set for the moveTimelineEvery plan
- Manager and organisation support namedSupportEvery plan
- A review cadence set to revisit the planCadenceEvery plan
The most common failure is a plan that is all 10, a stack of courses with no stretch work and no exposure. Most career growth comes from the job and the people around it, so if the 70 and the 20 are empty, the plan will not move anyone toward a new role.
Readiness for the target role
The plan lists the actions. This matrix tells you how ready the person actually is for the target role, across the competency areas a move depends on. Score each person against the target role and the gaps that must close before a move jump out. In Excel the readiness and gaps calculate as you type.
| Employee | Target role | Core skills | Leadership | Domain | Stakeholder | Strategic | Ready |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Okafor | Team Lead | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 90% |
| B. Nguyen | Senior Specialist | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 70% |
| C. Alvarez | Product Ops | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 50% |
| D. Kapoor | Head of Function | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 60% |
| E. Fischer | Staff Engineer | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 20% |
| Coverage at required | 60% | 20% | 60% | 40% | 0% | 58% |
E. Fischer is not ready for the target role yet: strong on core craft but no demonstrated leadership, stakeholder or strategic work, which is exactly the 70 and 20 the plan has to supply before a move is realistic. A. Okafor is close, with only the strategic competency left to evidence.
The 70-20-10 development mix
The actions column uses the 70-20-10 model: most growth comes from doing the work, a good share from learning through others, and a smaller share from formal study. Use this split to pressure-test every plan, a plan weighted only to the 10 rarely moves anyone toward a new role.
| Type | Share | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Experience (on the job) | 70 percent | Stretch assignments, leading a project or team, owning a new workstream, a rotation or secondment into the target area, deputising for the next role. |
| Exposure (learning from others) | 20 percent | Shadowing someone in the target role, mentoring or being mentored, coaching, peer feedback, joining forums where the next-level work happens. |
| Education (formal learning) | 10 percent | Courses and certifications, structured programmes, reading and self-study, conferences, the formal credentials a target role requires. |
How to use it
- Agree the aspiration and a target role
Start with where the person wants to head and turn it into a concrete target role, lateral or a promotion, with a rough horizon.
- Map the gap to the target role
Set the current role against what the target role demands across skills, experience and behaviours, and name where the gap is widest.
- Pick the skills and experiences to build
Choose the few capabilities that most unlock the move, not everything the target role lists.
- Plan the 70-20-10 actions
Build the gap closed with roughly 70 percent stretch work, 20 percent exposure to people, and 10 percent formal learning.
- Set a timeline and milestones
Put a horizon on the move and the milestones that show the person is getting ready, so progress is visible to both sides.
- Name the support and review cadence
Agree what the manager and organisation will provide, and the cadence to revisit the plan as the role and ambition shift.
When growth is mapped to real target roles and the experiences behind them, people stay and move up instead of out. It is the same skill-to-role mapping that lets Disprz customers build from within, and the reason retention holds when a visible next step exists.
Common mistakes this template prevents
- A plan aimed at a vague direction with no named target role, so the experiences are never chosen on purpose.
- A career plan confused with an IDP, tuning the current role instead of mapping the next one.
- A career plan confused with a PIP, treating growth as a shortfall to correct rather than a move to build toward.
- A plan that is all formal learning, with no stretch work or exposure, so the person studies but never grows into the role.
- No readiness check against the target role, so a promotion is a hunch rather than a decision backed by evidence.
- A plan written once and never revisited as the person's ambition and the available roles change.
Which format should you use?
| Format | Best for | What is inside | Editable | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sharing and print | The full template, formatted to print or circulate | No | 56 KB | |
| Word | Editing the wording | Every section as editable text you can adapt | Yes | 87 KB |
| Excel | Filling it in live | The grid and fields set up as a working spreadsheet | Yes | 66 KB |
Questions people ask
What is a career development plan?
How is this different from an IDP?
How is it different from a performance improvement plan?
What is the 70-20-10 model?
Does the Excel version work in Google Sheets?
Do I have to fill the form three times?
A career plan is only real when the experiences behind it actually happen. That is the part we run.
Bring your career development plans to a 30-minute working session. We will show how Disprz maps the skills a target role needs, assigns the learning behind the 10 percent, and tracks readiness by person, so a promotion decision is backed by evidence rather than a hunch.