What are some of the methods you use to upgrade the skills of your development team?

" Part of my annual plan is a team development strategy. I set training and development objectives for each member and detail the courses or training they need to take to achieve these. In addition to this formal training, I also look for ad hoc opportunities to improve the skill sets of my team. An example of this is assigning them tasks that will stretch them and require them to learn new methodologies for software development. I will also partner a junior member of the Cisco team with someone more senior who can mentor them. This benefits the junior member because they acquire new development skills and the senior member who learns mentoring and leadership skills. My goal is to promote two of my team into senior hardware engineering positions within Cisco each year."