I really like your comment! Thanks Tim! I agree, it’s not the only safety but I think it’s a prerequisite to all other kind of safeties. If you don’t feel safe to say “no”, yes, you’ll end up overcommitting. There is indeed much to explore. Psychological safety is the one I’ve been lacking most of my career. I’ve asked people in my network, not a lot of people feel safe in their work environment. There’s a lot of work for us to do!

I want to remind you here that psychological safety is important, but not the only kind of safety!

Making the work safe may require new tooling, techniques, and approaches. Safe-to-fail requires some scheduling safety (which is not provided by tight sprint-packing and aggressive scheduling) as well as permission and accountability from management. Safety in development may require new disciplines and tools around coding, testing, and deployment. Safety in contracting and management may require new policies and tools as well.

There is much to explore!