The ITP isn't a separate form you fill out once and file away — it's the running plan your whole TAP experience builds toward. It starts as your Individual Development Plan (IDP), the same career-progression tool you've used at each touchpoint of your service: your first permanent duty station, promotions, deployments, changes of duty station. TAP's job is to take that same planning habit and point it at your last touchpoint — separation, retirement, or release from active duty.
Where it starts, and where it has to end up
Your ITP formally begins at Individualized Initial Counseling (IC), which is mandatory for every service member and has to happen no later than 365 days before your transition date. That's also the earliest point you're required to have started thinking concretely about what comes after — not just "I'm getting out," but the actual mechanics of housing, employment, healthcare, and benefits you'll need to have lined up.
From there, your ITP isn't static. Every TAP course you take — DOL Employment Fundamentals of Career Transition, VA Benefits and Services, Financial Planning for Transition, Managing Your (MY) Transition — is meant to add something concrete to it, not just check a curriculum box.
The plan gets checked, not just built. No later than 90 days before your transition date, a TAP counselor and your commander (or their designee) verify at your Capstone appointment that you've completed all TAP mandates, met the Career Readiness Standards tied to your chosen track, and have a viable ITP. "Viable" is the operative word — Capstone isn't a formality if your plan is missing something real, like a job lined up, a housing plan, or an unresolved benefits question.
What "viable" actually means for you
A plan that lists "get a job" isn't viable in the way Capstone means it. A viable ITP has specifics: a target industry or employer, a housing plan for your first months out, a healthcare plan for the gap (if any) between TRICARE and civilian coverage, and a financial plan that accounts for the tax and allowance changes covered in Financial Planning for Transition.
If you're not sure your own plan would pass that bar today, that's worth addressing now rather than at Capstone — see Managing Your Transition Timeline (MYTT) for the month-by-month structure your ITP should be tracking against.