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North 51 Xcelerator as a personal development tool

http://www.north51digital.com/content/filemanager/Xcelerator-Brochure-April-2010.pdf

I have been using our product called Xcelerator at work for personal development for a couple of months now and I have found the process excellent. Essentially the process is:

  • You rate yourself in a number of areas (such as technical skills, customer focus, commercial??acumen?for example) and provide some back up text on why you think you are at that level.?
  • Your manager(s) read your ratings and the justification and then complete their own part of it.?
  • You meet and discuss / compare
  • You set goals on how you can improve you current level
  • You start the process again.
Each area has x amount of levels and each level has a detailed explanation of what you are required to do to achieve this level. Obviously these details are set per company but I feel ours are very clear and make it easier to try and attain.?

Once you have completed the process once you and your managers can then add evidence that can support your move up to the next level, for example if you created a particularly excellent tender, that could be noted along with evidence (perhaps the tender file or a link to it on the network). Adding the evidence as you go along is a great idea as when it comes to your next review you aren't just trying to randomly remember things, you have specific pieces of evidence to talk about.

The other benefit of this process and the evidence I'm collecting is that I hope it will help in my application for IEng (Incorporated Engineer) at some point. As my HND is registered with the BCS (British Computer Society) as only part satisfying the requirements for IEng, and I don't have a spare couple of thousand pounds to the degree topup, I will probably have to go through a technical report and review process. I think the collation of all my work evidence will be extremely useful.?

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