Laws of Software Engineering · Principle
Principle
Blameless Retrospectives
When something goes wrong, look at the system that allowed it, not the person who triggered it.
How to use it. In retros, ask "what made this look like the right thing to do at the time?" in place of "who messed up?". The honest answer is almost always missing information, weak feedback loops, or unclear ownership.
How it gets misused. Treated as "no consequences ever". Blamelessness applies to the analysis. You can still act on patterns of poor performance and hold blameless retros. They are different conversations in different forums.
Related
- Saying Just Culture A culture that holds people accountable for the work they did, while looking honestly at the system that shaped the choices they had.
- Saying The New View (Dekker) Human error is not a cause of failure. It is a symptom of trouble deeper in the system.
- Principle Psychological Safety The shared belief that you can speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and disagree without being punished or humiliated.
Clusters
- The Culture and Incidents cluster - How organisations learn, or fail to, from what goes wrong.