How to Create an Individual Development Plan (IDP) + Examples

Most people want to grow at work, and most managers want to help them — yet the conversation often ends with good intentions and no plan. Six months later nothing has changed, not because anyone stopped caring, but because "we'll support your development" was never turned into anything specific. The tool that turns the intention into action is a written plan with the person's name on it.

This guide shows how to create an individual development plan that actually gets followed: what it is, what to include, a step-by-step process, a reusable template, worked examples by role, and the mistakes that leave plans gathering dust. It is written for managers and HR who want development to be real, not a once-a-year box to tick.

The sections below give you the components, the steps, the template, and the examples. For the organisation-framed cousin of this document, see our guide to employee development plans.

Why an IDP matters

An IDP is one of the cheapest, highest-return tools a manager has, because it works on two people at once. For the employee, it turns a vague wish to progress into a concrete path — which is one of the strongest reasons people stay rather than leave. For the organisation, it builds the skills and future leaders it needs from the people it already has, rather than always hiring them in. The same document serves retention and capability at the same time.

It also gives the manager something they often lack: a real coaching agenda. Instead of a vague "how's it going?", a manager with an IDP has specific goals, actions, and check-ins to work through with each person. That structure is what turns a well-meaning relationship into visible progress. The rest of this guide is about building a plan that delivers it — starting with what goes in one.

What to include

A complete individual development plan has eight parts. Leave any of them vague and the plan drifts — vague goals are the single biggest reason IDPs are written once and never opened again.

1. Current role & strengths

   Where the person is today and what they already do well — the honest starting point.

2. Short- and long-term goals

   Where they want to go, in 6–12 months and over the next few years, in their own words.

3. Skill-gap analysis

   The specific gaps between current skills and the target, prioritised by what matters most.

4. Development actions (70-20-10)

   A mix of stretch work, learning from others, and formal courses — not courses alone.

5. Timelines & milestones

   Dates against each action, so progress is visible and reviewable.

6. Success measures

   How you will know it worked — a project shipped, a certification earned, a behaviour observed.

7. Support & resources

   What the manager, mentor, and organisation will provide: time, budget, access.

8. Review cadence

   When the plan will be revisited — quarterly at minimum — and who owns each check-in.

The 70-20-10 idea runs through the whole thing: most growth comes from real work and other people, with formal learning the smallest slice. Before building one, it helps to be clear on how an IDP differs from the documents it is often confused with — the next section.

IDP vs the documents it's confused with

Three plans get mixed up, and the confusion causes real harm — most of all when a growth tool and a corrective one are treated as the same thing. Here is how they differ.

The IDP and the employee development plan are near-twins — treat any difference as emphasis, not a separate document (see our employee development plan guide). The PIP is the opposite: corrective, not developmental, and never to be dressed up as growth — see our guide to the performance improvement plan. With the distinction clear, here is how to build an IDP.

How to create one: 7 steps

Build the plan with the employee, not for them — ownership is what makes it stick. Work through these seven steps in a conversation, then write it down.

A template you can copy

You do not need special software to start — a shared document with these fields works. Fill one per employee, keep it where both parties can see it, and update it at each review rather than starting fresh.

Keep it to a single page. A plan that runs to five pages is one nobody revisits — the discipline of fitting it on one page forces the priorities that make it useful. Worked examples make it concrete, which is next.

Individual development plan examples

Here is what an individual development plan looks like in practice, across three roles. Notice the shape is identical each time: one clear goal, the specific gap, and a 70-20-10 mix of actions with dates — not a list of courses.

For longer-horizon versions mapped to specific job families, see our career development plan examples. Next, the mistakes that make plans fail.

Mistakes that make IDPs fail

Most plans do not fail because they were badly written. They fail because of a handful of predictable errors after they are written. Here are the five that matter, each with the fix.

That last fix points to the scaling problem: a handful of IDPs in a shared drive is manageable, but a few hundred is not. That is the next section.

Running IDPs at scale

Everything above works for one person and a shared document. It breaks the moment you try to run it across hundreds of people, keep it current, and show leadership that development is happening. That is the gap a platform closes — it turns an individual development plan from a document into a live, connected process.

1. Skill-gap analysis

   Maps current skills against goals automatically, so the plan starts from data, not a guess.

2. Personalised learning paths

   Delivers the development actions each plan promises, in the flow of work.

3. Progress tracking

   Shows what is on track, slipped, or complete — for every plan, in one view.

4. Skills, not completions

   Measures capability built rather than courses ticked, so development connects to readiness.

5. A live view for leaders

   Turns hundreds of plans into a picture leadership can act on — where capability is growing and where it is stuck.

The result is development run as a measurable capability rather than a once-a-year document. For how this connects to keeping people, see our guide to employee development and retention.

Frequently asked questions