Artifact: Psychological Safety Incident — The Staging-Flakiness Retro

A diagnosis of a retro where a real blocker went unspoken until after a deadline slipped -- exercises co-15. Everline and every name here are fictional; every quote is an illustrative, constructed example.

The safety failure: in a planning meeting two weeks earlier, someone raised a staging-flakiness concern and Priya (rushed, focused on the sprint commitment) responded "let's not use that as an excuse, we've committed to this date." Chris was in that meeting. When staging got worse the following week, Chris read the earlier response as "raising this again won't be welcome" and stayed quiet rather than risk a repeat of that reaction.

Concrete norm change: starting next retro, Priya adds a standing agenda item -- "what did someone almost say this sprint but didn't?" -- asked explicitly, every retro, whether or not anything obviously went wrong. This isn't a one-time apology or a single "please speak up" email; it's a recurring prompt built into the ritual that already happens every two weeks, so the invitation to raise a concern doesn't depend on anyone remembering it was offered once.