A framework for collaborative organisational learning - A catalyst for continuous software process improvement

Organisational learning (OL) has always been associated with the organisational memory (OM) approaches. But does these OM approaches provide the suitable framework for successful collaborative organisational learning? It is very noticeable that the OL process is not clearly defined in many OM approaches reviewed. These OM systems do not formally define OL strategies, and the learning process is mostly left to be an individual act. The organisational learning process should not be seen as the outcome of the collective individual learning. Individual learning does not guarantee that every knowledge worker will be aware of all new and updated knowledge that are related to his/her expertise. Such mismanagement of knowledge evolution is a major pitfall in most OM approaches. Not centrally controlling this activity will lead to designing unintelligent organisational memories that presumably represent the infrastructure for achieving successful organisational teaming. The argument that we wish to express in this paper is, there must be a formal process model that is strictly followed by all stakeholders involved. It has to be considered as the standard way of working and thus ensuring continuous improvements of the content and quality in their work processes. In this paper, we introduce a conceptual framework to support collaborative organisational learning in the domain of software development. This paper also explores the organisational learning strategies in many organisational memory approaches and how far they can support realising the slogan of becoming a 'learning organisation'.