Forsgren: Frame engineering productivity metrics using leadership's strategic terminology
Nicole Forsgren · How to measure AI developer productivity in 2025 | Nicole Forsgren · Oct 19, 2025 · at 50:50
Nicole Forsgren, creator of DORA and SPACE frameworks, explains how engineering leaders should communicate the return on investment of AI tools to executives.
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“If you can solve a problem that they have, or it's like something that they're focused on, if you can slightly reframe it even, right? Like if they're calling everything developer productivity, go ahead and call it productivity. If they're calling it velocity and velocity is what matters to them, think about how to frame this in terms of velocity. If they're talking about transformation or disruption, right? How does this help with the disruption? Because then it will resonate with them. We don't want to make them work to understand what it is. We're doing and the value that we provide.”
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“Anyone who's looking at that and like, dear CEOs or whoever who are like, now I can lay off half my workforce. That's not what this is about, right? It's not about taking a task and cutting your time in half because now what we've enabled is your ability to do…”