DNP 805 Topic 1: the Individual Success Plan
The word is collaboration: this plan is agreed with faculty rather than submitted to them, and the deliverables you write into it become what you are held to for the rest of the course.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
A negotiated document, not a form
Read the assignment's own framing before opening the document: the plan requires collaboration with course faculty to establish mutually identified and agreed deliverables. That makes it a negotiated contract rather than a form, and the practical consequence is that you should arrive with a draft rather than expecting to be told what to write. Faculty cannot know which practice immersion opportunities exist at your site, which competencies you have already partly addressed, or what stage your project is at. Bring specifics and let the conversation refine them. The three programmatic requirements are the plan's structure and they are genuinely different: practice immersion hours are a quantity to be logged and evidenced; competency work is qualitative and has to be demonstrated rather than counted; and project work is sequenced, with each stage depending on an approval you do not control the timing of, which is what makes the sequencing genuinely difficult.
Write the immersion hours plan against real opportunities rather than a target number — say where the hours will come from, who supervises, and what you will do that could not be done at a lower level of preparation, since immersion hours spent doing your existing job do not count for much. For competencies, map the ones this course addresses and identify a specific artefact for each: a completed analysis, a presentation delivered, a policy drafted. An artefact is evidence; an intention is not. For the project, check the DNP Program Milestones document the assignment names and identify which milestones fall in this course — the assignment notes that not all courses have them, which is worth confirming rather than assuming. Then set dates that leave slack before each deadline, because the dependency on faculty and college review is the part students consistently underestimate. Expect to revisit the ISP; a plan that never changed is one nobody looked at again.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Treat the plan as a negotiated agreement rather than a submitted form.
- 02Distinguish a quantity to be logged from a competency to be demonstrated.
- 03Attach a concrete artefact to each competency rather than an intention.
- 04Build slack around deadlines that depend on other people's review.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
Name: Assignment Rubric
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A completed ISP agreed with course faculty.
- 02A practice immersion hours plan tied to real opportunities and supervision.
- 03Competencies mapped to specific artefacts.
- 04Project milestones identified for this course, with dates.
- 05A record of what was agreed.
Milestones, competencies, hours, then the deliverables
Prepare a draft first
Arrive at the faculty conversation with specifics rather than blanks.
Practice immersion hours
Name where the hours come from, who supervises, and what work they involve.
Programme competencies
Map competencies to specific artefacts you will produce.
Project milestones
Identify which milestones fall in this course and their deliverables.
Dates with slack
Schedule around dependencies you do not control.
Where the programme documents live
Recommended databases
- The DC Network DNP Program Materials
- The DNP Program Milestones document
- The ISP document
- Your practice site's education or research office
Search sequence
- 1.Download the ISP and milestones documents before drafting anything.
- 2.Check which milestones fall in this course, since the assignment says not all courses have them.
- 3.Identify immersion opportunities at your site and confirm supervision before committing to them.
- 4.List the competencies this course addresses and decide the artefact for each.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
AACN Essentials
American Association of Colleges of Nursing · 2024
The competency framework the programme's competencies derive from, which is what the artefacts must demonstrate.
- 02
AONL Nurse Leader Core Competencies
American Organization for Nursing Leadership · 2024
A parallel competency set, useful for identifying what doctoral-level practice activity looks like.
- 03
What is Project Management?
Project Management Institute · 2024
Scheduling around dependencies you do not control, which is the planning skill this document requires.
- 04
Implementation strategies for large scale quality improvement initiatives in primary care settings: a qualitative assessment
BMC Primary Care · 2023
Implementation planning at scale, relevant to sequencing the project work realistically.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Completing the plan alone and submitting it, when collaboration is the requirement.
- Setting an hours target with no account of where the hours come from.
- Recording intentions rather than artefacts against competencies.
- Assuming this course has milestones without checking the milestones document.
- Scheduling deliverables with no slack for faculty and college review.
Submission checklist
- Did you bring a draft to the faculty conversation?
- Are the immersion hours tied to named opportunities and a supervisor?
- Does each competency have an artefact attached?
- Have you checked which milestones fall in this course?
- Is there slack before every date that depends on someone else?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.