Learning and Development Strategy Used by Top Teams In 2025

In product development, standing still is falling behind. Your tools evolve, your users change, and the skills your team needed last year might not cut it tomorrow.

That’s why having a clear learning and development (L&D) strategy is no longer a fancy HR initiative.

According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report, 93% of organizations are worried about employee retention. Their top stated solution? Providing better learning opportunities. 

That’s not a coincidence. People stay where they can grow.

For fast-moving teams and those undergoing digital transformation, this means one thing: building a structured, ongoing approach to learning is one of the smartest plays you can make. Not just for individual growth — but for organizational performance, product innovation, and long-term success.

In this guide, we’ll break down what makes a great L&D strategy, how to build one step by step, and what real-world teams are doing to get it right. Let’s dive in.

What Is a Learning and Development Strategy?

A learning and development strategy is a company’s game plan for helping its people grow. It’s how organizations equip employees with the skills, knowledge, and capabilities they need to do their jobs and to thrive and grow beyond them. For Product-led Organizations, this means enabling product managers, product designers, product leadership, engineers, and cross-functional teams to build better products, make smarter decisions, improve organizational health and organizational performance, and lead with confidence.

You could think of it like a product roadmap, but for people.

Just as your roadmap outlines how a product will evolve to meet the needs, an L&D strategy outlines how your team will evolve to meet the company’s product vision and market demands. 

Without it, learning becomes reactive, ad hoc, and disconnected from business outcomes. With it, growth becomes targeted, measurable, and aligned with your product vision.

An example of L&D strategy

Let’s imagine a rapidly-scaling startup. 

New data-driven PMs are onboarding monthly, engineers are moving into lead roles, and customer expectations are shifting fast. Without a clear strategy, everyone scrambles to figure things out on their own. 

With an L&D strategy in place, however, there’s a much more structured path: onboarding programs, skill-based learning tracks, coaching, cross-training opportunities, and leadership development,  all planned, tracked, and measured for optimal results.

Product Roadmap Template

Download our easy-to-use template to help you create your Product Roadmap.

Get the Template

The purpose and benefits of a learning and development strategy

A strong L&D strategy is not a siloed HR initiative that product teams should leave to chance. It’s a business accelerator that should be treated as one. This means that product management should be directly involved in it. 

Here’s why an L&D strategy matters:

• It bridges skill gaps across teams, reducing costly delays and handoffs.

• It improves product decision-making by leveling up critical thinking and data fluency.

• It boosts employee engagement and retention, especially for high-potential team members.

• It prepares the next generation of leaders with real, relevant development.

• It aligns learning initiatives with product strategy, OKRs, and product goals.

• It builds a culture of continuous improvement and product innovation.

For product organizations, this means fewer blockers, faster execution, and stronger outcomes at every level of the product lifecycle — from product discovery and validation to product launch, iterative testing, and scaling. A well-executed corporate learning and development strategy ensures that team members have the right skills at the right time.

What makes an L&D strategy successful

The best L&D strategies are not one-size-fits-all. They’re tailored, iterative, and tightly integrated with company goals. Here’s what sets great strategies apart:

• Clear alignment with business and product goals

• Leadership buy-in and involvement from day one

• Dedicated budget and resources for execution

• Personalized learning paths based on roles, levels, and goals

• A blend of learning formats (on-the-job, formal training, mentorship)

• Measurement plans tied to outcomes (not just completion rates)

• Feedback loops to continuously improve content and delivery

• Accessible and inclusive opportunities for all employees

Done right, an L&D strategy becomes more than a learning program — it becomes a key driver of product excellence and team growth.

Framework to Build a Learning and Development Strategy That Works

A good L&D strategy sounds great on paper. Making it work in a real organization with tight deadlines, shifting priorities, and limited time is a whole other question! That’s where smart structure, strong incentives, and the right tools (including AI) make all the difference.

1. Align learning goals with business objectives

If your L&D strategy isn’t rooted in your company’s goals, it’s just noise.

The first step — and maybe the most important — is getting crystal clear on why you’re investing in learning. What problems are you solving? What capabilities does your team need to meet this quarter’s objectives, or next year’s roadmap?

Start by connecting with team leads and stakeholders to map learning priorities directly to business outcomes and Product OKRs. Are you aiming to speed up feature delivery? Reduce product bugs? Build stronger experimentation muscles? Whatever your business goals are, your learning goals should help get you there faster.

Next, run a skills gap analysis. This team upskilling is about understanding what your team can do today, and what they’ll need to do tomorrow. You can use tools like Skills Base or Degreed to track technical, strategic, and soft skills across roles. For example:

• Are PMs confident leading customer discovery interviews?

• Do designers understand product analytics dashboards?

• Can engineers contribute to product-level thinking?

Once you spot the gaps, prioritize ruthlessly. Focus on skills that tie directly to team or product performance. Don’t try to teach everything; teach what matters. 

Cem Kansu, the VP of Product at Duolingo, underlined the vital link between identifying a skill gap and reaching product goals on our Product Podcast, explaining:

“The key skill that we want our product managers to be really good at is interpreting data. We want them to understand why numbers are spiking up and how the change that we made, made our users act differently.”

And here’s where AI steps in: platforms like Gloat or Retrain.ai use machine learning to map current employee skill sets to future business needs, surface gaps you might have missed, and even recommend targeted learning paths. 

Pro tip: If a learning goal doesn’t move the needle on your outcome-based roadmap, your users, or your bottom line — it’s not a priority. Leave it out.

2. Design a structured, role-based L&D framework

Once your goals are clear, it’s time to structure your learning approach. Needless to say, structure is everything.

A solid L&D framework shouldn’t feel like a scattered playlist of online courses. It should feel like an intentional growth path that’s tailored to what each person needs in their specific role and stage of development.

Start by breaking it down by role and seniority level. Here's how that might look:

• Associate Product Managers → Foundations of user research, writing specs, Agile workflows, product metrics.

• Data Product Managers → Data modeling, experimentation, SQL fluency, collaborating with data scientists.

• AI Product Managers → Understanding LLMs and ML models, prompt engineering, ethical AI use, translating research into product.

• Product Owners → Backlog management, stakeholder alignment, sprint planning, and outcome tracking.

• Group Product Managers → Coaching, org-level prioritization, driving alignment across teams, leading roadmap strategy.

• Product Leaders / Heads of Product → Org design, executive influence, cross-functional vision setting, building a learning culture.

From there, structure each track into bite-sized, stackable learning blocks. Think short internal videos, playbooks, mini-challenges, cohort-based deep dives, and mentor-led projects. The goal is to build something people can actually complete alongside day-to-day work.

AI becomes a game-changer at this stage. You can use AI tools to:

• Auto-curate content based on individual goals

• Recommend new learning based on recent performance reviews or skill trends

• Adapt learning plans dynamically as someone grows

Pro tip: Build each track like you’d build a product. Validate the need, personalize the experience, and measure the impact. When learning feels like a guided journey, it’s more likely to stick.

3. Make learning operationally sustainable

Even the best L&D strategy will fail if it’s constantly competing with “real work.” And in fast-moving product teams, everything feels urgent. The frenetic nature of the industry is why product prioritization is so necessary. It’s also  why your learning strategy needs to be built with day-to-day needs and practicalities in mind.

The key to making learning more sustainable is to integrate learning into your team’s existing workflow and not bolt it on as an extra task. 

Instead of trying to carve out massive time blocks, think in small, repeatable rhythms. For example:

• Use the “10% learning time” model, where everyone gets a few hours a week to focus on development (Fridays could work well for this kind of change).

• Pair new skills with live projects— For example, apply new  customer acquisition skills into your next sprint planning meeting.

• Run short learning sprints after a release, when pressure is low and teams are more open to reflection and growth.

• Include a "what we learned" moment in every Agile retro — this reinforces the idea that learning is part of delivering, not separate from it.

And for those times when work truly takes over, make sure the learning content is asynchronous, self-paced, and easy to access. Many companies adopt a microlearning approach to professional development in which their team can learn in 15–20 minute chunks between meetings, on a commute, or during a quiet moment at their desk.

Leveraging the right AI resources will also streamline how new learning opportunities are delivered: 

• Offer quick, contextual learning answers on demand (e.g. “How do I prioritize a roadmap using RICE?”)

• Automate nudges and reminders that suggest relevant micro-lessons during downtime

• Generate quick summaries of key concepts from longer documents or training sessions

Pro tip: If learning feels like something employees need to “ask permission” for, it won’t scale. Make it feel natural, expected, and fully integrated into how the team works.

4. Incentivize learning with real outcomes 

If learning feels like extra homework, no one’s going to do it—especially when there are features to ship, users to support, and roadmaps to hit. So what’s the secret to getting people to engage with L&D? Make it worth their while.

Start by connecting learning to what people actually care about: career growth, recognition, and influence.

Here’s how you make that real:

• Tie learning achievements to successful performance reviews or even promotions. Completing certifications in stakeholder analysis or AI data analytics could form part of how individuals are evaluated and rewarded.

• Offer internal mobility incentives. Want to move into a Group PM or AI PM role? Show the path, and make structured learning a clear step toward it.

• Build internal learning milestones. These can be simple: badges, certifications, or project-based assessments that prove someone’s leveled up. Share wins in public channels, shout people out in team meetings, and celebrate the momentum.

• Use peer learning as a reward. Just like we do with our Micro Certifications, let your best leaders become teachers . Run short internal sessions, mentor others, or contribute to your learning library.

AI can help here too. Platforms like EdApp use AI to:

• Gamify learning paths with personalized challenges and leaderboards

• Send smart nudges based on past engagement and habits

• Recommend the next best course based on role and behavior

• Track learning impact and surface it in manager dashboards

Pro tip: Recognition beats rewards. Yes, bonuses and perks help — but what really drives people is feeling seen, supported, and set up to grow. Make learning feel like part of their professional story where you played a supportive role.

5. Use measurement to prove and improve L&D value

If you’re not measuring your learning and development strategy, it’s impossible to know what’s working or what’s worth continuing.

Too many teams stop at tracking course completions or attendance. That’s not enough. What you need is a learning scorecard, similar to a product scorecard, that shows how development is translating into real-world impact.

Start with three layers of metrics:

1. Engagement metrics – Who’s participating, how often, and how consistently?
   Example: % of team members actively completing learning modules each month.

2. Progress & performance metrics – What skills are being gained, and is behavior changing?
   Example: Pre- and post-learning self-assessments, manager evaluations, or peer feedback.

3. Business impact metrics – Is learning making the team better at what matters?
   Example: Faster time to ship features, better product experimentation results, improved OKRs.

Try to align L&D metrics with product metrics or your North Star. If you’ve rolled out a learning module on customer discovery, check if your team is now running more user interviews or generating stronger insights.

Now, this is where AI becomes incredibly helpful. AI-powered platforms can:

• Pull in learning data from multiple sources

• Map learning progress to performance data (e.g., productivity, cycle time, NPS)

• Surface patterns you might miss, like which teams learn fastest or where drop-off happens

• Predict which skills will be in highest demand based on current usage and market trends

Pro tip: Measurement isn’t about catching people out — it’s about learning what’s effective and doubling down. Show the ROI, adjust the strategy, and keep leveling up the impact.

ROI Calculator Template

Calculate ROI with this free, interactive template and built-in calculator to maximize business impact.

Get the Template

6. Scale knowledge sharing from the inside out

Although well-advised, not all learning needs to come from external courses or Product Management Certifications. In fact, some of the most valuable knowledge already exists inside your team—you just need to unlock it and spread it.

This is where L&D shifts from being just “training” to becoming part of your team culture.

Start by making internal knowledge sharing easy and expected:

• Create space for learning rituals like lunch-and-learns, demo days, or short “what I learned this sprint” sessions. These don’t need to be formal—just consistent.

• Encourage peer-to-peer mentoring. Pair new PMs with senior ones. Let engineers run intro sessions on product analytics. Have product ops share how they use tools better.

• Capture institutional knowledge—postmortems, decision-making docs, design rationales — and store them in a central, searchable place (like Slack or Confluence).

• Incentivize contributions: Recognize those who share useful frameworks, templates, or learning resources internally. This reinforces that teaching is also a form of leadership.

Pro tip: When people see their knowledge being reused and valued, they’re more likely to share again. Build systems that acknowledge contributors and make their lessons last.

7. Continuously adapt using feedback loops

Your learning and development strategy shouldn’t be static — it should evolve just like your product does. What worked for your team six months ago might be outdated today. That’s why building tight feedback loops into your L&D program is non-negotiable.

Start simple: ask people what’s working and what’s not.

• Run quarterly learning surveys that focus on clarity, usefulness, and engagement. Ask questions like: Did this help you do your job better? Would you recommend this track to a teammate?

• Include open-ended prompts like “What’s one thing you wish you had learned sooner?” These often surface golden nuggets of actionable insights.

• Use Agile retros to surface learning needs: Did we hit a blocker because someone lacked a skill? Could that gap be filled through L&D?

You’ll then turn feedback into action.

• If a course has low engagement, tweak the format — maybe it’s too long or too abstract.

• If people want more peer-led sessions, make space for them.

• If a new trend emerges (e.g., product teams wanting to understand generative AI), build a fast-track workshop and test it.

AI can help here, too. Tools like MonkeyLearn, Qualtrics XM, or even simple integrations with ChatGPT APIs can:

• Analyze qual and quant data at scale

• Detect sentiment and flag recurring themes

• Suggest adjustments to content, structure, or pacing based on user input

Pro tip: Treat your L&D strategy like a product. Prioritize the backlog, run small experiments, measure the results, and iterate often. The more responsive your strategy is, the more it stays relevant — and the more your team keeps growing.

Real-world Examples of Effective L&D Strategies

To build a strong learning and development strategy, product organizations need more than theory — they need working models. 

Here are real-world examples of companies that embedded learning into their operations in ways that aligned with their product strategy, supported employee growth, and delivered measurable business value.

Amazon: Remove barriers to learning and scale what works

In 2021, Amazon expanded its Career Choice program by covering 100% of tuition for frontline employees — upfront. This addressed one of the biggest blockers in upskilling: access. 

The result? A 45% jump in program participation in just six months. 

What makes this strategy effective is how intentionally it lowers the cost and time burden for learners while aligning directly with Amazon’s need for a more skilled internal workforce. For Product-led organizations, the takeaway is clear: frictionless access and business-aligned upskilling drive adoption and outcomes.

PepsiCo: Design a development ecosystem — not just isolated training

PepsiCo launched a full ecosystem of learning opportunities, from basic skills to degree programs, all funded by the company.

Through initiatives like the Digital Academy, the company reached over 11,000 employees with tech-focused modules tied to strategic goals like digital transformation KPIs. This wasn’t about offering courses — it was about building internal pathways to new roles and careers. 

For product companies, the strategy reinforces the importance of tying learning programs to workforce planning: What future roles will you need? How are you helping people get there?

A 2023 systematic review published by International Journal of Research in Engineering & Management noted the benefits of investing in employee development programs to nurture internal talent and provide opportunities for employee growth and skill development (p5 of the PDF). The research concludes that this approach supports employee retention and satisfaction as well as preparing internal candidates for future roles.

Netflix: Build a peer-to-peer learning culture

Netflix took a decentralized approach to learning by enabling engineers to teach each other through its internal DevEd program. 

A small L&D team created simple tools — like checklists — so that subject-matter experts could run high-quality sessions on specialized topics. This doubled internal training sessions without scaling the team. 

This is a lesson in leveraging internal knowledge and trust: L&D doesn’t always have to come from the top. Sometimes the most scalable learning comes from within the team, embedded in how work happens.

Make Training and Development Strategies a Unique Advantage

A strong learning and development strategy is about making your entire organization more adaptable, more resilient, and more future-proof.

In product teams especially, the pace of change is relentless. Tools evolve. Markets shift. Customer expectations rise. If your team’s knowledge base doesn’t keep up, your product won’t either.

But when you treat learning like a system you build something bigger than training. You build a culture that attracts top talent, retains your best people, and helps every team member grow into their next big role.

So start small. Start structured. Start now.