Failures go in writing

Failures happen to everyone. The problem is not the failure itself but the culture that hides it. Hidden failures repeat, and repeated failures grow into bigger ones. So we put our failures in writing.

When something breaks, we write a postmortem. Not about whose fault it was, but about what happened, why it happened, and what needs to change so it does not happen again. We share this document with everyone on the team.

Sharing failure records is uncomfortable at first. We accept that discomfort to help avoid repeating the same mistakes.