Mastering the Requirements Process, 4th Edition

44

Learning as You Go

Every time you do something you learn something, and you reuse lessons that you learned in the past. Over time, every individual builds up a store of knowledge, and the more knowledge a person has, the more valuable he is to his employer. However, when he goes home at night almost all of his knowledge goes with him. Fortunately, his knowledge comes back with him the following morning. Inevitably when he leaves the organization, his knowledge leaves permanently.

This situation could be summed up by saying that people learn, organizations don’t. That is, unless the organization has a way of capturing and retaining knowledge as it is acquired. The part of that knowledge we are concerned with here is often called “lessons learned.” ...