---
title: "The AWARE Development Plan"
description: "The AWARE Development Plan presents a structured way to pursue long-term goals in software development, education, dance, or other areas of interest. David Ward developed it after seeing team members struggle to define their growth paths and describes using a similar process for his own goals. AWARE stands for Aim, Work Back, Achieve, Reflect, and Encore: define the desired outcome, work backward into smaller aims, execute measurable objectives, learn from the result, and maintain the plan. Short- and medium-term aims act as checkpoints, allowing people to identify missing experience, seek opportunities, and course-correct. Ward recommends reviewing the plan with a lead or manager, including during weekly one-on-ones, to select next steps, connect opportunities to aims, and ensure completed aims are reflected on."
---

# The AWARE Development Plan

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Oct 28, 2021

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

The AWARE Development Plan presents a structured way to pursue long-term goals in software development, education, dance, or other areas of interest. David Ward developed it after seeing team members struggle to define their growth paths and describes using a similar process for his own goals. AWARE stands for Aim, Work Back, Achieve, Reflect, and Encore: define the desired outcome, work backward into smaller aims, execute measurable objectives, learn from the result, and maintain the plan. Short- and medium-term aims act as checkpoints, allowing people to identify missing experience, seek opportunities, and course-correct. Ward recommends reviewing the plan with a lead or manager, including during weekly one-on-ones, to select next steps, connect opportunities to aims, and ensure completed aims are reflected on.

## Context

People may have long-term career or personal goals but lack a clear sequence of steps for reaching them. The plan is presented as a way to clarify what must be true to achieve a goal, identify development areas and opportunities, answer what comes next, and detect detours early enough to course-correct.

## Approach / What changed

AWARE uses five stages: Aim at a long-term outcome, Work Backward to define smaller achievable aims, Achieve aims with clear objectives and measurable success, Reflect on learning and follow-up goals, and use Encore to maintain the plan. The plan is reviewed with a lead or manager, including in weekly one-on-ones, and updated as aims and opportunities change.

## Takeaways

- AWARE breaks a long-term goal into short- and medium-term aims that provide checkpoints for tracking progress and identifying when course correction is needed.
- Reflection follows each completed aim and asks what was learned, whether the expected value was achieved, what should change next time, and which new aims should be added.
- The development plan is maintained over time by reviewing completed aims, new opportunities, timeline progress, and opportunities to connect other tasks to planned development.

**Tags:** [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [Onboarding](https://yomu.fyi/topic/onboarding)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/aware-development-plan)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/aware-development-plan
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-30T15:28:46.313Z

[Read original post](https://shopify.engineering/aware-development-plan)