ABSTRACT The role of academic developers frequently remains obscure to the academics they support and is often misunderstood by management. In this paper, we present a framework for academic developers and academics to work together productively. We use a self-study method to interrogate what is impactful academic development practice by reflecting upon how we navigated through the tensions and realities of leading a university-wide curriculum enhancement project from the margins. We redress prevalent obscurities surrounding academic development practice by making sense of our personal learnings and experiences using a disciplined approach, with insights from higher education and management research. In our framework, we differentiate between three levels of academic development practice stemming from distinct assumptions about what results in T&L enhancements: Success in Level 1 academic development practice is attributed to individual differences between academics; Level 2 academic development practice focuses on what academic developers do to equip academics with a bag of technical and pedagogical competencies and support in producing learning resources; Level 3 academic development practice focuses on fostering a culture of learning organisation through empathetic listening, learning from mistakes and being there for those whose practice we are trying to influence.