Professional Development of Software Developers

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As software developers, how do we get professional development? Who's responsibility is it to ensure we receive professional development?

There are many ways to get professional development. For example, you can subscribe to a video training provider like Pluralsight or get free content from Microsoft thru Channel9 or many of the training videos they offer thru their technology focused sites, like ASP.NET. There's a lot of free stuff out on the web you can search for as well. Product documentation, such as information on MSDN, books and blogs are all great sources for professional development. User group meetings, meetups, lunch-n-learns, round-tables, group discussions and mentorships are also valuable ways of getting professional development. So there's tons of ways to get professional development you just got to go out there and get it.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold up..."just got to go out there and get it". Seriously?!

That's wrong! Well not completely. As an individual, you should express some degree of personal responsibility and ensure you are getting some sort of professional development. But the buck does not stop there. If you work for someone else or are part of a team where you have leaders above you, such as senior devs, lead developers, team managers, etc, then they have a responsibility as well, to ensure you are getting some professional development. If they're not, then they are wrong too! Bottom line here is you and your leaders share responsibility in making sure you are getting professional development.

Individual responsibilities:

• Set your professional development goals for the year. Don't just focus on technology oriented development either. Career, productivity, work-life balance are good ones too.


• Build a repository of training content; either on your computer, an external drive or thru a training provider and schedule some time throughout the month to watch them


• Join a user group or find a meetup


• Find several blogs (personal and product specific) and read them daily, if not weekly


• Attend at least one conference throughout the year


• Maintain some kind of frequency. The more you do these activities the more likely you are continue doing them

Leader responsibilities:

• Make time for your subordinates to get professional development on company time. Put it on a schedule


• Allow them to experiment and explore on thier own during work hours


• Have your subordinates show case their work on a regular basis


• Get them access to books and training material


• Host lunch-n-learns


• Have your juniors lead discussions or give talks


• Bring someone in from the outside if you don't have the knowledge and skills in house


• Start a mentorship program

I'm sure there are other things that can be done for professional development. These are the most obvious ones to me. How do you all do it? Is there a process you can share? Let me know, I'd love to here about it.