Software engineers must continuously learn and integrate. Software engineers must continuously learn and integrate. You learn more and more about what works and what doesn’t. If you’re serious about learning, you’ll continuously learn to prune the dead weight that doesn’t work. That’s not entirely without risk. Continuous improvement and learning programs are sprouting up all over as organizations strive to better themselves and gain an edge.

How, after all, can an organization improve without first learning something new? Solving a problem, introducing a product, and reengineering a process all require seeing the world in a new light and acting accordingly. In the absence of learning, companies—and individuals—simply repeat old practices. Change remains cosmetic, and improvements are either fortuitous or short-lived.

“Organizational learning means the process of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding.” —C. Marlene Fiol and Marjorie A. Lyles, “Organizational Learning,” Academy of Management Review, October 1985.

Learning organizations are skilled at five main activities:

• Systematic problem solving,
• Experimentation with new approaches,
• Learning from their own experience and past history,
• Learning from the experiences and best practices of others, and
• Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization.

Measuring Learning
Managers have long known that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This maxim is as true of learning as it is of any other corporate objective.