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Assigning (and accepting) responsibility is, I think, rather different from the "blame" that such retro's try to avoid. You have to have a very safe work envir

Assigning (and accepting) responsibility is, I think, rather different from the "blame" that such retro's try to avoid. You have to have a very safe work environment for that to happen. Otherwise, saying "I was blocked by person X" finding the wrong ears is a great way for person X to wind up on a PIP if the company's management is sufficiently inept. I do miss being able to be honest at work. Edit: rereading my comment, I realized I could have been clearer. What I really was getting at was the motivation: how do we help each other avoid the problem in the future, versus "everyone but person X can feel okay about what happened".

testudovictoria 3y ago
Same with me. By blame, I really meant responsibility. We missed a pretty big deadline not too long ago. In the retro, I accepted a lion's share of the responsibility. I'm a senior dev rather than a team lead, but I had my head down during a lot of the technical discussions and PRs rather than diving deep with the juniors and mid-levels. I apologized for it. I have made myself more available since then. PRs have been under more scrutiny from everyone, and I feel like the constructive feedback and requests for comments have been flowing more openly.