| The software development process can be studied from several different perspectives. One could focus on the product being developed or the interaction that takes place during the development process. Increasingly, organizations are concerned about how the learning process takes place during the development process and how lessons-learned can be transferred between different projects within an organization. This dissertation focuses on factors affecting group learning and the interaction of a software development team. The researcher was the key project leader for a major software development project that lasted two years and included 18 groups comprising more than 50 people. Using both project management and facilitation skills to move the project forward, the researcher maintained a detailed log outlining the successes and failures of the development process, and the key factors that led to those outcomes.; Developing an information system is only part of an organization's goals. Organizations must learn and capture their experiences if they wish to survive in a changing environment. The focus of this dissertation is on the ways in which the interaction of team members enabled their adaptive learning process as they responded to the changing environment. The dissertation will provide insights and develop a theory about the relationships of various factors such as culture, experience, turnover, technology, turbulence, new knowledge and training to group learning.; This research employed three key concepts that are cyclic in nature: group learning, an iterative software development methodology, and the action research method. Action research lends itself perfectly to this study because it has a cyclic framework that is compatible with an iterative software development model. A framework of group learning was generated that can be exploited to further study how group learns. Since, the concept of a learning organization is aimed at translating learning experience into usable knowledge, developing theories about this process can lead to research that will enable organizations to gain insight into ways to increase their learning potential with the prospect of increasing their knowledge base. |
