Knowledge is one of the most important assets of an organization that directly affects business success, and its importance increases for organizations that use knowledge-intensive processes such as the software development industry. In an industry in which technological developments are rapid, in order to keep up with the continuously increasing competition and to obtain competitive advantage the software organizations need to obtain the correct knowledge, use it efficiently and pass it to future projects evolving it accordingly. The major aim of this research is to propose a novel model, namely AiOLoS, for assessing the level of organizational learning and learning characteristics in software development organizations. The primary contributions of this two-legged AiOLoS model are the identification of the major process areas and the core processes that a learning software organization follows during its organizational learning process and to provide the necessary measures and metrics and the corresponding definitions/interpretations for the assessment of the learning characteristics of the software development organization. The research is supported with a multiple case-study work conducted in software development teams in order to identify the mapping of the core processes and the applicability of the AiOLoS model to software development organizations, its utilization as a tool for assessing organizational learning and providing a basis for software process improvement.

Organisationens mål är att de gäster som kommer till hotell/konferensanläggningen skall bli behandlade som kungar. Affärsidén i organisationens lyder: "Ursäkta ers majestät! Hos oss är alla gäster kungar". För att få gästerna att känna sig som kungar krävs samarbete, intresse av arbetsplatsen, kvalitetstänk, kommunikation och förståelse mellan personalen. Studien är en fallstudie i förbättringsarbete och skall ge organisationen verktyg att använda i förbättringsarbetet. Syftet med studien är att identifiera förbättringsområden inom en organisations verksamhet som ska prioriteras. Ett förbättringsområde ska vidareutvecklas som ett projekt. Det förbättringsområde som valts ut är att studera hur kommunikationen fungerar på arbetsplatsen samt att hitta verktyg för att kunna förbättra och förnya arbetssättet på arbetsplatsen. Målet med studien är att undersöka hur organisationen kan: 1) Förbättra kommunikationen 2) Öka samarbetet 3) Fokusera mer på det positiva De metoder som använts har varit observationer, dokumentationer som dels primär källa samt tidigare fem intervjuer som sekundär källa. Teorin är grundad på förbättringsarbete, kommunikation, ledarskap, lärande organisationer och organisations lärande cykeln. Det framgår fortsatt att just samarbetet och kommunikationen är det som organisationen talar om. De centrala delarna i resultatet visade : Kommunikationen behöver förbättras då personalen har svårt att nå fram till varandra samt att de talar om varandra och inte med varandra. Samarbetet är en mycket viktig del för organisationen och personalen upplever att det finns en del att göra för att få samarbetet att fungera bättre både medarbetare emellan och mellan medarbetare och ledning. Fokusera på det positiva då det finns negativa tendenser som organisationen präglas av då det framgår att stress förekommer mer och att personalen ser att arbetet fungerar sämre. De slutsatser som studien visar är att organisationen behöver se över sitt ledarskap och göra det tydligare. Förbättringsarbetet som har påbörjats bör fortsätta som en del i organisationens kontinuerliga förbättringsarbete. Organisationen behöver också arbeta mera med kvalitetsverktyg. / The organization’s goal is that the guests who come to the hotel/conference establishment should be treated like kings. The business idea of the organization is: "Excuse me your majesty! With us, all guests are kings. In order to make the guests feel like kings requires cooperation, interest of the workplace, quality awareness, communication and understanding among the staff. This study is a case study of improvement work and should give the organization the tools to use in the improvement process. The study aims to identify areas for improvement within an organization’s activities that should be prioritized. One area for improvement will be further developed as a project. The improvement area selected is to study how communication works in the workplace and to find tools to improve and innovate approaches in the workplace. The goal of this study is to examine how the organization can: 1) Improve the communication 2) Increase cooperation 3) Focus more on the positive The methods used have been the observations, documentation, and the primary source and previous five interviews as a secondary source. The theory is based on improvement, communication, leadership, learning organizations and organizational learning cycle. It appears that just continued cooperation and communication is what the organization talking about. The central parts of the results indicate: 1. The communication needs to be improved since the staff finds it difficult to reach each other and that they talk about each other instead of with each other. 2. Cooperation is a very important part of the organization and staff feels that there is a lot to do to make cooperation work better for both employees themselves and between employees and management. 3. Focus on the positive, since there are negative trends that the organization is characterized by stress being more frequent and that the personnel perceive that work functions less well. Where it appears that stress occurs more and that the staff sees that the work function less well. There are tendencies that collaboration, participation and communication do not function so well and that there are missing parts in the communication. The study shows conclusions that the organization needs to see over their leadership and to do it clearer, the work on improvement that has been started should continue as a part in the organization in a continuous work and that the organization lacks a part equipment to work after. The conclusions of the study shows that the organization needs to review their leadership and make it clearer. The improvement work that has begun should be continued as a part of the organization’s continuous improvement efforts. The organization also needs to work more with quality tools.