Accelerating professional development with Professional Development Ladder

Question

We are planning to adapt Professional Development Ladder (PDL) approach to accelerate and structure professional growth of engineers. This approach is introduced by Construx Software and popularized by Steve McConnell in his Professional Software Development book.

Can you please answer to the next questions:

1. Do (or did) you use this approach? If you use some alternative, please, provide answers on it and give some reference.
2. What are the results? (Both positive and negative)
3. What was the cost of integration of PDL to your company's policies and processes?
4. What obstacles did you encounter?

Some references to alternatives are of special interest.

Answer 1

In my experience, professional development is the responsibility of both the employer and employee. What has worked best for me is simply voicing what I need to my supervisors. If you are rational about it and can illustrate how it benefits the company, then it's usually a no-brainer to approve.

I find formal processes for this are usually too rigid and not relevant to my situation. Every employee's situation is different and having one all-encompassing process usually will not cut it. For me, the main benefit of a formal process is that it forces employer and employee to look at it amidst a busy work schedule.

By all means, adopt a formal process, but do not rely on it. It gets the ball rolling, but it is up to the people using it to keep it rolling. Open lines of communication is the key - something that a formal process can potentially get in the way of.