Domain 10: Culture & Organization

Blameless Culture, Psychological Safety, Learning

All Teams | Culture | Max 30 Points

0-6
Ad-hoc
7-12
Foundational
13-18
Standardized
19-24
Advanced
25-30
Optimized

Scoring Criteria by Level

LevelCriteria
1Blame culture; heroes celebrated; silos; fear of speaking up
2Some awareness; lip service to blameless; inconsistent
3Blameless postmortems; cross-team collaboration; learning
4Generative culture (Westrum); psychological safety; innovation
5Learning organization; failure celebrated; continuous growth

Assessment Questions

#QuestionMax
1How blameless are your postmortems?6
2Is psychological safety present?6
3How well do teams collaborate?6
4How is knowledge shared?6
5How is reliability ownership distributed?6

Focus Areas

  • Blameless: Focus on systems, not individuals
  • Safety: Safe to report errors, ask questions
  • Westrum: Generative vs pathological culture
  • Learning: Continuous improvement mindset

Anti-Patterns (Red Flags)

  • Looking for "who" not "what" failed
  • Punishing people for incidents
  • Information hoarding
  • Fear of asking questions
  • Reliability is "ops problem"

Evidence Checklist

  • Blameless postmortem template in use
  • Psychological safety surveys conducted
  • Cross-team collaboration examples
  • Knowledge sharing sessions regular
  • SRE embedded with dev teams

Westrum Culture Types

TypeCharacteristics
PathologicalBlame, silos, fear
BureaucraticRules, turf, tolerance
GenerativeLearning, sharing, inquiry

Blame Systems, Not People

Psychological safety enables excellence.