Concept · Agile & Software Development
Blameless Postmortems
Origin: Google SRE
Biological Parallel
Post-conflict reconciliation in primates repairs relationships after aggression—chimpanzees embrace former opponents within minutes of fights, prioritizing coalition stability over individual grievance. Blameless postmortems implement the same evolutionary logic: extracting systemic lessons requires psychological safety, and psychological safety requires explicit reconciliation rituals. Species that punish individuals for system failures (colony collapse, predation events) don't evolve complex cooperation; neither do organizations that weaponize incident reviews.