There are several ways to go about training and development. I will Identify the most common and explain. The most are informal, formal, self-directed, cross-training and job rotation.
Informal training and development is rather casual and incidental. Typically, there are no specified training goals as such, nor are their ways to evaluate if the training actually accomplished these goals or not. This type of training and development occurs so naturally that many people probably aren't aware that they're in a training experience at all. Probably the most prominent form of informal training is learning from experience on the job.
Formal, Systematic Training and Development involves carefully proceeding through the following phases: Assessing what knowledge, skills and / or abilities learners need, Designing the training, including identifying learning goals and associated objectives, training methods to reach the objectives, and the means to carefully evaluate whether the objectives have been reached or not.
A systematic approach is goal-oriented (hopefully, to produce results for the organization and/or learners), with the results of each phase being used by the next phase. Typically, each phase provides ongoing evaluation feedback to other phases in order to improve the overall system's process.
Self-directed training includes the learner making the decisions about what training and development experiences will occur and how. Self-directed training seems to be more popular of late. Note that one can pursue a self-directed approach to informal or formal training. For example, self-directed, informal training might include examples of informal training listed above (book discussion groups, etc.), as long as the learner chose the activities and topics themselves, either for professional or personal reasons. Self-directed, formal training includes the learner's