Ld Training Plan

---
name: ld-training-plan
description: Builds the year's L&D priorities on one page, producing programmes ranked against business goals, a capacity and budget check, a quarterly calendar and a not-this-year list. Use for "run ld-training-plan", "annual training plan", "training calendar", "L&D plan for next year", "too many training requests", "prioritise training requests", "learning plan tied to business goals", "what we will not build this year", part of the AI for L&D and Corporate Training Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Training Plan

## When To Use
One person must build a supervisor programme and a leadership programme at once, six other requests sit in the inbox, and every sponsor thinks theirs is first. Use this once a year, or when a new wave of requests breaks the old plan. It answers one question: with the design days and budget we actually have, which programmes run this year, in which quarter, and what openly waits?

## When Not To Use
If you do not yet know what teams lack, run Training Needs Assessment first; a plan built on requests alone is a wish list with dates. To plan the build of one programme, use ADDIE Project Plan.

## Inputs
- The needs table from Training Needs Assessment, or the list of open requests with their sponsors.
- The business goals for the year, in the leadership team's own words.
- Your capacity in design days and delivery days, and the budget, as you know them.
If you have none of this, I start from the list of requests and the top business goals and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
Learning needs analysis as the CIPD factsheet frames it: needs flow from business strategy down to team and role, and the plan follows that flow instead of the loudest request. The pack stays at role and task level; no plan is built from individual appraisal ratings. The judgment is to rank programmes, never people, and to stop adding when capacity runs out. The failure it prevents: a team of one says yes to everything in January, misses four deadlines by June, and loses the sponsor who mattered most.

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: which business goals will leadership judge this year on, how many design and delivery days you really have after the LMS tickets and the recurring sessions, and which commitments are already fixed (compliance, onboarding cohorts)?
2. List every candidate programme with its need, its evidence and its sponsor. Needs with no evidence stay marked "requested, not shown"; they can still be ranked, but the label stays.
3. Set the ranking criteria with the user, for example link to a named business goal, urgency, reach by role. The user sets the weights; I never invent them. Score each programme on each criterion and show the working.
4. Cost each programme in design days, delivery days and budget, as [placeholders] the user fills from past projects. Fixed commitments come off the top first.
5. Fill capacity in rank order and draw the line where days or budget run out. Everything below the line goes to the not-this-year list with a one-line reason a sponsor can accept, and the cheaper move where one exists (a job aid, a manager conversation, a vendor course).
6. Place the programmes above the line in a quarterly calendar, spreading design peaks so two builds never land in the same quarter if you can avoid it.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Training Plan
Year: [year] | Owner: [L&D lead] | Capacity: [design days] design, [delivery days] delivery, [budget]
## Ranked programmes
| Programme | Business goal | Evidence | Criteria scores | Design days | Budget | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [programme] | [goal] | [source or "requested, not shown"] | [per criterion] | [days] | [cost] | [n] |
## Quarterly calendar
| Quarter | Design | Delivery | Fixed commitments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | [programme] | [programme] | [compliance, onboarding] |
## Not this year
| Request | Sponsor role | Reason | Cheaper move meanwhile |
|---|---|---|---|
| [request] | [role] | [below the capacity line because] | [job aid, manager guide, none] |
## Decision
[Sponsor or leadership team] approves the ranked list and the capacity line by [date]; [L&D lead] tells each not-this-year sponsor by [date].
```

## Done When
- Every programme links to a named business goal or is marked as not linked.
- The capacity line is drawn from the user's own days and budget, not a benchmark.
- Every item below the line has a reason and, where possible, a cheaper move.
- The calendar shows fixed commitments before new builds.

## Quality Bar
- Rank programmes, never people; no list of named employees to train comes from appraisal ratings.
- Criteria and weights are the user's; every score shows why.
- Every number is a [placeholder] the user fills; nothing is estimated to make a programme win.
- The not-this-year list is visible to sponsors, never a quiet backlog.
- The plan fits on one page a sponsor can read before the meeting starts.

## Next
Run ld-addie-project-plan (ADDIE Project Plan) to plan the first programme on the list with real phases, owners and dates.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).