Economic Incentive for Learning

Continuously refactoring, like all the other XP practices, can be shown to have a direct effect on the economics of software projects. If a team refactors continuously, their code will be easier to understand, extend, and maintain. As a result, the team will be more efficient, and that will enable them to get more done in less time. Bang, there's your economic incentive.

So is there also a direct economic incentive for practicing continuous learning? You'd better believe it.

Judy Rosenblum, who spent five years as Coca-Cola's chief learning officer and three years as Coopers & Lybrand's vice chairwoman for learning and education, says that learning must be connected directly to business. Organizations have to make learning a strategic choice. And to make that happen, organizations need leaders who see how important learning is to the continued health and success of their organizations. Such individuals must effectively embed learning into their organization's processes and projects, as Rosenblum explains.

Someone has to decide to make learning not just an individual experience but a collective experience. When that happens, learning isn't just something that occurs naturally it is something that the company uses to drive the future of the business. [Webber2000]

You might think this is completely obvious of course organizations need to keep learning! But is learning a main topic in executive meetings? Is it believed to be as important as marketing, sales, and human resources? Most organizations would like to say, "Yes, we value learning," but in practice, they don't. They hope teams will learn, and they send people to training classes a few times a year, but they don't understand that continuous learning can have a huge impact on their bottom line. Instead, they overemphasize action.

Judy Rosenblum addresses this oversight.

The sense of urgency creates a bias for action. And that, in turn, prevents organizations from taking the time to learn. You have this phenomenal asset your organization's collective experience but this bias for action keeps you from focusing on it. [Webber2000]