No improvement without learning: prerequisites for learning the relations between process and product quality in practice

Generic relationships between process and product quality are rarely available, because such relationships are highly depending on context factors; the impact of a certain process on product quality is often largely influenced by the characteristics of the specific organisation, processes, business domain, people, timing factors, etc. This does not mean we should stop investigating those relationships, but that we have to look at these context factors and learn these relationships within such a specific context. Creating an organisational structure, in which effective learning is established, is, therefore, a major challenge for organisations in the software domain.

In this paper a conceptual model is presented of nine ‘learning enablers’ to facilitate learning. These enablers help in determining individual and organisational learning during improvement programmes. The main question that is addressed in this paper is: ‘Which factors enable learning in software process improvement and to what extent?’