Building A Learning Plan Andy Warren

Some history For years I’ve been talking and presenting about having a professional development plan, essentially a business plan for an individual Well received Changes perspectives Didn’t answer the details of how or what This presentation is about “how” How to decide what to learn How to measure what you learn and how long it takes/costs How… What to learn is still a really hard question I have some ideas we’ll discuss

What is a learning plan? It is the road map and task list that guides you to learning a given topic It has the work to do It has time estimates It has budget estimates It defines “done” It’s a document you wish someone would just give you when it’s time to learn topic X!

Methodology We’re going to talk about 3 documents you’ll use to manage learning The Learning List The Learning Plan The Learning Log We’ll walk through each of those and talk about how and why they help you get to your goal

First, WHAT SHOULD YOU LEARN? Things you know you need to better at Things you think you’ll be doing soon at work Things you see mentioned in job ads Things you see that you think will make you worth more in the job market New product features Things that just interest you Doesn’t have to be just technology (and shouldn’t be, at some point) This all goes on the learning list

The Learning list This is a list of stuff you want to learn It can be something huge like “Powershell” It can be something very focused like “Use the SSIS Lookup Transform” Just because it’s on the list doesn’t mean you’ll get to it Just because it’s on the list doesn’t mean learning it will make you rich and famous It’s where you go when you have time and energy to learn

Not Just a list The list is a great big bucket – not all things in it are equally valuable or doable right now. How do you pick? I like to add these columns: Estimated Hours (or Small/Med/Large) Estimated Cost (for a class, book, etc) Why? Deadline (if any) The “trick” is to not worry about filling these out when you add something to the list. If you can, great. If not, that’s ok too Once in a while you’ll come back and try to fill those in. They are guestimates, not guarantees!

Sample List Learn Hours Cost Why Deadline Notes Powershell Trans Replication 20 $50 Used at work, I don’t know it SSIS Lookup Transform SSIS Logging

Working the list You have a list of things you want to learn and some rough idea of the time and effort – how do you pick? This is a circular problem. You think about deadlines, goals, time, money, and energy and you look at the list, and back again, until you can say “I think I want to tackle this next” Then…you have to figure out if your guestimate of time and cost is correct. Or do you? Finally you’ve picked something though – now it’s time to build a plan

The learning plan – Part 1 This takes anywhere from a little to a lot of effort Imagine you want to learn replication for example. All flavors, or just one? That’s after you figure out there are multiple flavors! Let’s say you’ve settled on just learning transactional replication because that is what you will be using at work. How do you define done? Done might be “I can do it blindfolded” Or done might be “I’ve walked through it once and understand the concepts” Doesn’t have to be perfect, but you need to describe the finish line About how much time do you want to spend? About how much money do you want to spend? When are you going to spend this time?

The learing Plan – Part 2 Find places to learn: Is there a book? Are there webinars, PASS recorded sessions, etc? Search SSC and MSSQLTips, save the list of articles Web search for the topic, save links while you’re looking to see if someone has published a list or has a pointer to something that helped them learn Is there an exam? If so, look at exam prep resources Who are the thinkers on the topic? Find the bloggers and MVP’s Who do you know that knows the topic? A guide would be very handy!

The learning log This is the easiest part or the hardest, depending on your temperament Capture the time and focus of each learning interval. “April 17, 2014. Read this http://sqlandy.com/2014/04/writing-my-next-question-of-the-day/ and based on that, visited SQLServerCentral and answered 3 questions of the day (and realized that I should search for questions related to things I’m trying to learn), .25 hrs).” “April 10, 2014. Watched one presentation from PASS Summit 2012 on ……, 1.0 hrs” What tool to use? Excel. Word. Blog. You pick the tool. Ideally it’s something where you can filter by the learning topic and where you can add up your hours, but it’s not critical. This lets you see (and show if you wish) momentum. You can capture ideas, see where you spent time (or didn’t). It’s invaluable when you have to pause due to work/life and resume much later.

Summary This presentation is a framework for managing your learning It’s still hard to decide what to learn It’s still hard to figure out how to learn it Figuring out what to learn is hard, both at a high level and the details of any particular topic

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