information systems development is a high-risk undertaking, and failures re
main common despite advances in development tools and technologies. In this
paper, we argue that one reason for this is the collapse of organizational
intelligence required to deal with the complexities of systems development
. Organizations fail to learn from their experience in systems development
because of limits of organizational intelligence, disincentives for learnin
g, organizational designs and educational barriers. Not only have many orga
nizations failed to learn, but they have also learned to fail. Over time th
ey accept and expect poor performance while creating organizational myths t
hat perpetuate short-term optimization. This paper illustrates learning fai
lure in systems development and recommends tactics for overcoming it.