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Standard : Teams embrace risk and learn from failure

Purpose and Strategic Importance

This standard ensures teams treat risk and failure as essential ingredients for learning and innovation. By fostering reflection and experimentation, teams grow stronger and more resilient over time.

Aligned to our "Psychological Safety First" and "Post-Incident Learning Culture" policies, this standard creates space for safe risk-taking and continuous improvement. Without it, fear stifles progress and opportunities for meaningful change are missed.

Strategic Impact

  • Stronger adaptability and resilience in delivery teams
  • Cultural shift from blame to learning and shared responsibility
  • Increased innovation through experimentation and reflection
  • Improved recovery from incidents and near misses
  • Higher engagement and trust in leadership and systems

Risks of Not Having This Standard

  • Fear of failure reduces innovation and ownership
  • Learnings from incidents are lost or repeated
  • Psychological safety deteriorates, leading to disengagement
  • Risk-averse culture prevents adaptive improvement
  • Failures are hidden rather than explored

CMMI Maturity Model

Level 1 – Initial

Category Description
People & Culture Teams hide or avoid failure.
Risk is perceived as threat rather than opportunity.
Process & Governance No structured mechanisms for learning from failure exist.
Technology & Tools No tools or channels for sharing learning or incident analysis.
Measurement & Metrics Failure trends and root causes are not tracked.

Level 2 – Managed

Category Description
People & Culture Some reflection happens informally, but it depends on individuals.
Process & Governance Teams conduct occasional post-mortems, but follow-up is inconsistent.
Technology & Tools Ad hoc use of tools like shared documents or wikis for lessons learned.
Measurement & Metrics Some incidents are logged, but learnings are not systematically applied.

Level 3 – Defined

Category Description
People & Culture Risk-taking and failure are acknowledged as part of growth.
Teams are encouraged to share openly.
Process & Governance Post-incident reviews are consistent and drive real improvements.
Technology & Tools Dedicated spaces or tools exist for reflection and learning.
Measurement & Metrics Learnings are tracked, reviewed, and tied to improvement outcomes.

Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed

Category Description
People & Culture Teams and leaders model vulnerability and normalise learning from failure.
Process & Governance Retrospective and RCA outputs are integrated into planning and decision-making.
Technology & Tools Learning systems and change tooling highlight patterns in failure and remediation.
Measurement & Metrics Risk signals, near misses, and failure rates are monitored over time and acted upon.

Level 5 – Optimising

Category Description
People & Culture Risk is embraced strategically.
Teams experiment openly and improve faster through rapid feedback.
Process & Governance Learning from failure is institutionalised and continually improved.
Technology & Tools Insights from incidents feed real-time improvement dashboards and cultural development.
Measurement & Metrics Organisational learning is measured as a capability.
Failure becomes a catalyst for innovation.

Key Measures

  • % of teams regularly running post-incident or learning reviews
  • Evidence of implemented changes resulting from retrospectives or RCAs
  • Near miss reporting trends and analysis depth
  • Cultural health indicators (e.g. psychological safety survey results)
  • Time from incident to shared organisational learning
Associated Policies
  • Psychological Safety First
  • Post-Incident Learning Culture
Associated Practices
  • Contract Testing
  • Error Budget Policies
  • Deployment Freeze Windows
  • Release Orchestration Tools

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