maintaining-brag-docs

Brag Document Maintenance

Structure for documenting professional accomplishments and growth.

Document Structure

# Brag Document

Last Updated: [Date]

## Goals for This Year

### Q1 2025
- [ ] Launch new training curriculum platform
- [ ] Improve lab completion rates by 20%
- [ ] Mentor 2 junior team members

### Progress
* Platform: In development, 60% complete
* Lab rates: Up 15% since implementing new onboarding
* Mentoring: Weekly 1:1s established with Sarah and Mike

## Goals for Next Year

* Lead team expansion to 3 new hires
* Establish curriculum quality framework
* Present at 2 industry conferences

## Projects

### 2025-01 - Instruqt Lab Infrastructure Overhaul
Redesigned lab provisioning system reducing setup time by 40% and improving student success rates from 75% to 92%. Led cross-team collaboration between curriculum and platform teams.

**Impact**: 200+ students benefited in first month, reduced support tickets by 30%

### 2024-12 - Docker Compose Training Series
Created 5-lab series teaching Docker Compose fundamentals. Labs include health checks, networking, and multi-container applications.

**Metrics**: 95% completion rate, 4.8/5.0 student satisfaction

## Collaboration & Mentorship

### 2025-01 - Curriculum Team Retro Process
Introduced structured retrospective format improving team psychological safety and actionable outcomes. Team feedback indicates 85% satisfaction with new approach.

### 2024-12 - Cross-Team API Documentation
Collaborated with platform team to standardize API documentation across 12 services. Reduced onboarding time for new developers by 2 days.

## Design & Documentation

### 2025-01 - Lab Design Pattern Library
Created reusable patterns for common lab scenarios (API testing, database setup, deployment pipelines). Adopted by 4 curriculum developers.

### 2024-11 - Curriculum Quality Guidelines
Documented best practices for lab creation, reducing review cycles from 3 iterations to 1.5 average.

## Company Building

### 2024-12 - Hiring Process Improvement
Redesigned technical interview for curriculum developers. New process reduced time-to-hire by 10 days while improving candidate experience scores.

### 2024-10 - Internal Tooling: Lab Template Generator
Built CLI tool for scaffolding new Instruqt labs. Adopted by entire curriculum team, saving 2 hours per lab creation.

## What You Learned

### 2025-01 - Advanced Kubernetes Networking
Deep dive into CNI plugins and network policies for multi-tenant lab environments. Applied to new security-focused training content.

### 2024-12 - Technical Leadership Patterns
Completed "Staff Engineer's Path" book. Applied lessons to improve cross-team collaboration and technical decision documentation.

## Outside of Work

### 2024-11 - DevOpsDays Conference Talk
Presented "Building Effective Technical Training at Scale" to 200+ attendees. Received 4.7/5.0 rating, led to 3 follow-up consulting conversations.

Entry Format Templates

Project Entry

### [YYYY-MM] - [Project Name]
[1-2 sentence description of what you did]

**Impact**: [Quantifiable results or qualitative outcomes]
**Technologies**: [Key tools/technologies used]
**Collaboration**: [Teams/people you worked with]

Collaboration Entry

### [YYYY-MM] - [Activity/Initiative]
[Description of mentorship, collaboration, or leadership]

**Outcome**: [Result of the collaboration]

Learning Entry

### [YYYY-MM] - [Skill/Technology]
[What you learned and context]

**Applied to**: [How you used this learning]

Impact Statement Patterns

Quantifiable Impact

❌ VAGUE: "Improved system performance"
✅ SPECIFIC: "Reduced API response time from 800ms to 200ms (75% improvement)"

❌ VAGUE: "Helped team be more productive"
✅ SPECIFIC: "Automated deployment process, reducing release time from 2 hours to 15 minutes"

❌ VAGUE: "Made documentation better"
✅ SPECIFIC: "Rewrote onboarding docs, decreasing new hire setup time from 3 days to 4 hours"

Qualitative Impact (for managers)

✅ "Improved team psychological safety through weekly retrospectives,
   with team engagement scores increasing from 3.2 to 4.5 out of 5"

✅ "Established cross-functional working group that resolved 6-month
   platform dependency blocker"

✅ "Mentored junior engineer through first major project, resulting in
   successful promotion to mid-level"

Content Guidelines

What to Include

Projects:

• Significant features or initiatives you led/contributed to
• Problems you solved
• Systems you built or improved
• Process improvements

Collaboration:

• Mentoring and coaching
• Cross-team initiatives
• Unblocking others
• Knowledge sharing

Growth:

• New skills acquired
• Technologies learned
• Courses completed
• Certifications earned

Outside Work:

• Conference talks
• Blog posts
• Open source contributions
• Community involvement

What to Avoid

• Daily routine tasks
• Tasks any team member would do
• Vague accomplishments without context
• Exaggerations or unverifiable claims

Prompting for Details

When expanding an entry, ask:

For Projects:

• What was the measurable impact?
• How did this help the team/company/customers?
• What was the scope? (users affected, time saved, etc.)

For Managerial Work:

• How did the team improve?
• What process enhancements resulted?
• How did this contribute to culture/morale?
• What strategic decisions were made?

Update Frequency

• After major milestones: Document while details are fresh
• Monthly reviews: Scan recent work for brag-worthy items
• Quarterly summaries: Review and categorize accumulated entries
• Performance review prep: Comprehensive review and organization

Tips for Consistency

1. Use consistent date format: YYYY-MM or Month Year
2. Keep entries brief: 1-2 sentences per entry
3. Focus on impact: Always include outcomes
4. Be specific: Use numbers when possible
5. Update "Last Updated" date when modifying

Review Questions

Before adding an entry, ask:

• Would this impress my manager?
• Can I quantify the impact?
• Does this show growth or initiative?
• Is this unique to my contributions?
• Will I remember why this mattered in 6 months?