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What are your professional development goals? 🎯 Earn a badge by joining in!

Angelie Stephens

Professional development goals can be a great way to provide a north star for us to work towards. Whether you have a formal goals process as part of your job or you prefer to set goals for yourself on a more ad-hoc basis, having something to aim for can be a source of motivation for improving our careers.

In our Work Life blog this month, we explore professional goals and offer tips on how best to set them. Check it out here for more advice on how to consider your values, use the SMART goal framework, and identify action items. Plus, get some inspiration with examples of professional goals, and some words of wisdom from Rich Hurley, Senior Program Manager for Team Anywhere at Atlassian.

One of my personal goals is to complete a project management course this year! As someone who has always enjoyed organising projects, I would love to get some more formal training under my belt.

So, what are your professional development goals? We’d love to hear more about them, so please do share in the discussion below.

Once you’ve commented, you’ll earn a Work Life kudos badge! ✨

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Comments

Susan Waldrip

Hi @Angelie Stephens , best wishes for completing your project management course! I'm actually in the later stage of my career, so my greatest professional goal right now is work-life balance and enjoying what I'm doing and whom I'm working with (and I have both in spades, happy to say!). This is how I bring my best self to my work. And I'm so curious to hear what others' goals are!

Haunani Nakabara

To network with others outside my department and find out how we can help each other.

Laurie Sciutti

Earn more certifications and expand my knowledge of AI tools. 🥇🥇

Trudy P Claspill

Hi @Angelie Stephens

Great topic! I'm sure you'll succeed in attaining your goals!

I am just starting to think about my professional development goals for the next 12 months. Some are near term, like completing the renewal of my current Atlassian certifications. Some are a bit longer term, such as broadening my experience with Atlassian product migrations. I would say generally my professional development goals are oriented around being the best engineer/architect that I can be, so I want to always be learning new things and broadening my experience.

Anne Saunders

I'm in operations at a small development firm, so my job is a little bit variable and fluid. My professional development goals change pretty frequently, sometimes with the quarter 😅

Currently, I'm round-robin working my way through a few Atlassian courses, a HubSpot certification, and some legal writing training. I think my next major ambition is to actually develop a simple app to handle some of the things I do frequently, which will mean a big stretch and definitely some training.

Bryan F_g1ed7w

Whilst I was completing my MBA, I came across some conflicting advice about SMART goals. It can be a useful framework, but does have pitfalls, and it can sometimes exclude the 'WHY' and focus more on the 'WHAT'.

I read GRIP by Rick Pastoor recently, and found his approach to goal setting similar to (understanding your values prior to goal setting), but his approach to linking purpose, values, goals, dividing it across work, family and passion projects really compelling.

One oy my goals at the moment is writing a strategic foresight report on the Future of the workplace, and exploring the workplace across four dimensions (Office, Home, #rd place and digital).

Some additional reading on goal setting and SMART:

5 Ways to Set More Achievable Goals (hbr.org)

Amira khalifa

How I'm happy to join you on this community

zoz joomaster

Sounds good. Browsing to the page

Rebecca Dixon

Part of my role is helping our people at Sentify set objectives - my philosophy is to only set 1-2 a quarter really focussing on what is most relevant for the current state (of work, of life, of wellbeing). I find that any more can be overwhelming and constrictive. Things change all the time so we should be able to pivot and adjust / or even park our objective if its no longer holding true. I encourage our people to set an objective within an area they're already working in so as not to add more pressure to their lives, or to utilise something already happening to their benefit - eg, want to be better at presenting, use demo's or team meetings as an opportunity to practice in a safe, supportive space. I tend to use the GROW method in line with aspects of SMART. I think it's helpful to have someone help craft the objectives too. Its one of the parts of my role I love the most.

Good luck with your project management course!

Ron Preston

I like to have in mind a big audacious goal, however to achieve it I have to break it down into increments that can be achieved monthly, weekly and daily.

I call the daily goals MOA's and I identify these Major Outcome Activities out of my great list leading to my Big Audacious Goal (BAG) by picking the few most important tasks needing attention.

Doing this leads to so many of the smaller, less important tasks to become non existant once you go back and see how they were eliminated in due process of achieving the MOA's.

Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_

Thanks, @Angelie Stephens, for this mid-year reminder for goal planning. Most of the time, such activities take place at the beginning of the year, but we can always start working towards new goals at any time!

In my case:

Master Forge app development by the end of 2024.
Get back to the Top 100 in Kudos by the end of 2024.

Both are a bit challenging and require consistency ^^

Barbara Szczesniak

I also am in the later stage of my career. I have already succeeded in my main goal of not becoming a manager (I had a short stint managing 2 people at my last job and found that, although I might be good at it, I was not good at doing both that and completing all of my writing tasks at the same time.)

My current goal is to get the user guide I've been writing in Confluence into a state that can be published for our internal customers so that I can then keep it up to date with all the changes our team makes every few weeks.

Ingo Wenke_3nj2w5

Hi all,

while I've managed projects for decades, it's time to help and train other PMs. My next step is to support my PM team to reach the next level.

Zaid Smadi_njnq2v

The buddy system seems like something l would try this year. I'm planning to acquire a program management certificate.

Wish me luck 🙏

Gilbert Figueroa

Currently my professional goal is to bring value to a new company and a new team as a scrum master or as a business analyst. I was recently laid off because I work in a state where my precious employer is no longer hiring or keeping people.

I plan to apply to at least one position per day.

I will be working with Randstad on their RiseSmart program. If anyone has experience with them and can offer advice, I would love to see a reply.

briggity-wells

Hello @Angelie Stephens, best wishes to you on your Project Management goals. In terms of my own, my plans are to improve my skills and knowledge in the JQL space and continue to build upon exploring courses that assist in that effort. In addition, I am making strides in implementing more projects for our organization.

Thanks.

Gilbert Figueroa

I'm curious @Barbara Szczesniak. Is the user guide planned to be mostly text in a word document or are you planning to use pictures, graph or other media too?

Gilbert Figueroa

Good luck! :-)

Barbara Szczesniak

We will publish the guide as a website using Scroll Viewport, since our readers just need to view the documentation, so they do not need to have Confluence licenses.

Since we currently want to get something out, we are not using very many screenshots, but I may add those in future updates. I had been planning to maybe make some animated gifs, but Viewport supports video hosted on external sites better than embedded video, so I may not spend the time doing that.

Lauren Marten Parker

Thanks for sharing this, Bryan!I love the idea of incorporating values and work-life balance into goal-setting. We always want to emphasize the importance of those things anyway, but you're also describing some good mechanisms for making your goals your own, which makes you more likely to achieve them

Lauren Marten Parker

Thanks for sharing, Ron! I hadn't heard of MOAs before. That's a cool way to frame short-term goals

Lauren Marten Parker

Good luck, Zaid! I hadn't really thought about doing this until Rich suggested it, so it's on my list to try too.

Barbara Szczesniak

@Gilbert Figueroa So sorry that you were laid off. I'm sure many of us have been there over the years. Good luck in your search for a new position.

Stephen.Lugton

Having done a number of Project Management courses in the past (PMP, Prince2, Agile, etc.) I'm looking this year at honing my knowledge into specific areas; Evidence Based Management and Value Stream Management to help with heading in a more strategic direction at the moment.

Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM

My main professional development goals are to continuously enhance my expertise in DevOps and CI/CD practices while staying current with industry advancements. I am dedicated to ongoing learning through advanced training, certifications, and active participation in industry discussions. This commitment ensures I bring innovative solutions to my clients.

Additionally, I'm trying to be more approachable and supportive, ensuring I inspire confidence without intimidating.

Vronik

Hi @Angelie Stephens

This year I have already met many goals, but if it is true that I have two long-term goals left, they will probably keep me busy until December
1.- Learn from AI
2.- Learn about Cybersecurity
They are two branches that I am passionate about and that interest me a lot on both a personal and professional level.
For the same reason, waiting for Rovo to see what it can contribute to Atlassian teams, I am very curious about this new tool
I think it is very important to always have goals in order to take the necessary steps that lead you to improve your life both professionally and personally.

Regards

samanta.aragao

Hello,

My professional development goals include specializing in Atlassian tools such as Jira, Confluence, and JSM. I aim to deepen my expertise in these platforms and actively engage in Proof of Concepts (POCs) and client projects that leverage these tools. By doing so, I hope to enhance my skills and contribute effectively to project success.

Professional development goals can indeed be a powerful motivator, and I find that having clear objectives helps me stay focused and driven. I look forward to the opportunities and challenges that will come with this journey.

Angelie Stephens

Best of luck in your job search, Gilbert. 💙

Just in case you haven't joined already, we have a Jobs & Careers Community Group here that might be of interest for you!

Stefano Galati

Hi Angelie!

Professional development goals are indeed vital for guiding our career paths. One of my primary goals this year is to dive deeper into Agile methodologies by completing an advanced course on Scrum and Kanban. I'm excited to apply these new skills using Atlassian tools like Jira and Confluence to streamline our projects further.

How about everyone else? What are your goals, and how do you plan to achieve them? Let's share our plans and tips to inspire each other on this journey! Looking forward to hearing your stories.

Peter Domankus_inrjy7

I jumped onto Atlassian train only few months before my parental leave, so the break caused that my colleagues are quite a bit ahead of me in skills and experiences. My goal for next few months is to speed up my studies and get all the possible knowledge I need to be valid part of our team.

Abel saju varghese

Great insight! Setting professional development goals has been a game-changer for me. Currently working on enhancing my IT support skills and exploring certifications like ITIL. Excited to check out the Work Life blog for more guidance and inspiration. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to hearing about others' goals!

Emmanuel.A

Best wishes for completing your project management course! I'm actually in the later stage of my career, so my greatest professional goal right now is work-life balance and enjoying what I'm doing and whom I'm working with (and I have both in spades, happy to say!). This is how I bring my best self to my work. And I'm so curious to hear what others' goals are!

Angelie Stephens

Hey @Stefano Galati ! Deepening your Agile knowledge is a great goal to have, I'd like to learn some more about Agile too honestly.

In case it's helpful, you might be interested in perusing the Atlassian University catalogue - I did a quick search for agile and maybe one of the courses there would be useful for you https://university.atlassian.com/student/catalog/list?search=agile 😊

Angelie Stephens

Hi @Peter Domankus ! That sounds like a fantastic goal! For your studying journey, Atlassian University has a number of free Learning Paths that might be helpful for you: https://university.atlassian.com/student/collection/850385-learning-paths 😊

Angelie Stephens

Hey @Emmanuel.A ! Work-life balance is a perfect goal I think to be honest 😁 Happy to hear that it's going well for you so far 💙

Andy Gladstone

@Angelie Stephens good luck in pursuing your PM course (and certification?).

Where I am in my career, my goals are much less quantitative and more qualitative. I am hoping to help develop at least two employees into supervisors or managers in my organization. I have shifted focus from managing to mentoring, and a measure of my success will be their growth within the company.

Ron Preston

I am pleased you have found value.

All the best in your life journey going forward.

Thank you to all and best to all interacting here.

Emmanuel.A

glad to see lots of engagement on this post.. nice one

Angella Cole

In my current position, I have been using Excel more and more frequently. While I had a standard knowledge base for using the program, I have spent a lot of time searching for ways to make my spreadsheets "smarter" so certain tasks didn't take as long. A couple of weeks ago I began an online Excel course and I have already learned so much that is going to make my job easier! It has made me excited about my work again.

Vronik

Hola @Angelie Stephens

Actualmente el tema de la vida laboral es bastante complicado, pues tras la pandemia la humanidad ha cambiado mucho, hemos aprendido que podemos trabajar en remoto, que estar en la oficina en algunos casos no aporta nada (obviamente no se puede aplicar a todos los trabajos), el confinamiento, el miedo, en fin, ha habido un cambio,

la gente se ha dado cuenta de que quiere cosas distintas, ahora se valoran otros aspectos de los trabajos y han cambiado las prioridades, por tanto empresarios y trabajadores deben entenderse para trabajar en un modelo que beneficie a todos y permita una mejor actividad laboral y conciliación personal

Regards

Lauren McGoodwin

One of my professional development goals this quarter is to be more active on LinkedIn by engaging with my network via comments, sharing my work, and setting up some networking chats.

Umer Sohail _K15t_

Did you really just copy-paste the first comment? 😅

John Jiii

Love this post! Setting clear professional goals really does help keep things focused. I’m currently working on building better communication skills—especially for cross-team projects on our page.

Anne Saunders

The nature of my role is so random that long term actual task-focused goals are not very reliable. I do work to stay up to date and ready to work in and answer questions about our tooling, but that feels more like jogging on a treadmill than climbing a mountain.

Instead, I'm focusing my goals on soft skills improvements - how I interact and communicate with others, and monitoring my own mental and emotional well-being (mostly to ensure higher quality interactions and communications with others.)

Two discrete goals I have this year are:
1. to do better at internally marketing upcoming changes in our platforms and processes;
2. to solicit feedback and delegate responsibility for some of the changes and updates we have choices about (partly in the name of increased buy-in, and partly to reduce the load on me for those things.)

Amanda Barber

I love these goals. I'm in a similar spot with my task-focused goals, and I think that your goals for the year are a great starting point for my planning. The feedback and delegating of tasks are high on my list!