Nicole Forsgren
Researcher on developer productivity; co-wrote Accelerate and the DORA research, and created the SPACE framework.
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What they believe
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AI sped up the part of software work we could see, and it is the delivery systems downstream that are now being overwhelmed.
And so, like in the immediate term, yeah, we were getting more out, but now our systems, whether technology systems or human systems or processes, are really kind of getting overwhelmed.
youtube.comSaid 22 Mar 2026This on korrents
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22 March
From one piece Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit 15 beliefs · youtube.com
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Their words
And so, um I'm seeing across at least a handful of companies that explicit exec sponsorship makes a huge difference in not just using them, but trying new things and feeling safe to fail within, you know, kind of guardrails.
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korrents.com
You cannot mandate a tool developers dislike — they will quietly spin up the one they wanted.Their words
I'm going to sound old when I say this, but like I one time had a company tell me, "Oh, well, they have to use that CI/CD system." I'm like 20 bucks, they're just spinning up Jenkins. And they were, right?
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Their words
I I will say I tend to start with adoption. I am not a fan of an adoption metric. I don't like it, but also devs are like a gloriously cranky bunch.
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Their words
Some teams can, and but when they do it, they're doing it very, very intentionally. They don't say they're sacrificing quality. They say they're making a risk-based decision.
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Their words
Oh, I agree. You know, one is being able to clearly articulate the problem or the thesis or the idea. Without trying, I don't get there.
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Their words
We may have a handful of genies, but that's different from having a handful of friends, right? In part because the energy's different, the conversations are different. Also, they just agree with us constantly.
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Their words
Uh well, tech is easy, people are hard. And so, you know, sometimes getting the flow really is about understanding what I'm doing, having very clear direction and goals and and knowing what my what my work is doing.
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Their words
Well, now I'm getting feedback so quickly that I'm having to sometimes rebuild my mental model dozens of times in like a 30-minute period.
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Their words
And humans max out at about like 3 to 4 hours a day. Like really really hard deep work, right? Um which always makes me laugh when executives are like, "We need 8 hours of intense work."
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korrents.com
Delivery will keep being slow until companies apply AI to the human, business-process half of it, not just to coding.Their words
a lot of companies haven't started until now thinking about how we could apply AI to the very human, very business process part of it. And so, that will keep slowing us down until we find a way to to address it, right?
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korrents.com
The processes organisations build to make work uniform are usually the same processes that slow the work down.Their words
Or like all of the the things that we have structured process around to try to make things more uniform are often the things that slow us down.
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korrents.com
Release management is human group sense-making, and it does not scale to the volume of change AI now produces.Their words
so many times that process has been managed by humans because you're selecting the right candidate build and you're verifying it and you're thinking, you know, you're figuring out cherry picks and then you like rebundle and then you send it out and that doesn't scale if you have one or two or a handful of people trying to make group decisions and do group sense making.
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Their words
And not only that, but like humans were already a bit of a bottleneck in the review process. Now it can be worse because things that we fairly straightforward changes that some companies had automation around reviewing, they've removed that reviewing because if AI is involved and they're worried about the verifiability or the reliability of the code.
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korrents.com
AI did not create the bottlenecks in software delivery; it threw gas on processes everybody already knew were weak.Their words
There were a handful of people probably managing a security review process or a launch process or a deployment process or, you know, sometimes reviews were a little slow and they got backed up. Well, now we just threw gas on the fire and so all of that is a problem.
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Their words
And so, like in the immediate term, yeah, we were getting more out, but now our systems, whether technology systems or human systems or processes, are really kind of getting overwhelmed.
10 December 2025
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19 October 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
OutliveTheir words
Outlive by uh Peter Aia is fantastic.
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Back MechanicTheir words
Back mechanic by Stuart McIll is incredible.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
How Big Things Get DoneTheir words
I will say I love how big things get done. I can't pronounce the name. I think one's they're Scandinavian. One is um but it's it kind of dissects really large projects through recentish history and where they failed and why.
+ 2 more
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Lovedrcmnd.app
The Undoing ProjectTheir words
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. Uh Matt Velos recommended it to me and it's so good.
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Likedrcmnd.app
Jura coffee makerTheir words
Another one is a Jura coffee maker. I'd love good coffee and I'm not great at making it. So, I can just push the button and it'll give me anything I want, including like lattes, cappuccinos, or anything. So, that's kind of fun.
13 September 2024
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28 March 2024
27 March 2024
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 18 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
AI sped up the part of software work we could see, and it is the delivery systems downstream that are now being overwhelmed.
And so, like in the immediate term, yeah, we were getting more out, but now our systems, whether technology systems or human systems or processes, are really kind of getting overwhelmed.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
AI did not create the bottlenecks in software delivery; it threw gas on processes everybody already knew were weak.
There were a handful of people probably managing a security review process or a launch process or a deployment process or, you know, sometimes reviews were a little slow and they got backed up. Well, now we just threw gas on the fire and so all of that is a problem.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Review became a worse bottleneck under AI, because companies removed the review automation they had once AI started writing the code.
And not only that, but like humans were already a bit of a bottleneck in the review process. Now it can be worse because things that we fairly straightforward changes that some companies had automation around reviewing, they've removed that reviewing because if AI is involved and they're worried about the verifiability or the reliability of the code.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Show 15 more
Release management is human group sense-making, and it does not scale to the volume of change AI now produces.
so many times that process has been managed by humans because you're selecting the right candidate build and you're verifying it and you're thinking, you know, you're figuring out cherry picks and then you like rebundle and then you send it out and that doesn't scale if you have one or two or a handful of people trying to make group decisions and do group sense making.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
The processes organisations build to make work uniform are usually the same processes that slow the work down.
Or like all of the the things that we have structured process around to try to make things more uniform are often the things that slow us down.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Delivery will keep being slow until companies apply AI to the human, business-process half of it, not just to coding.
a lot of companies haven't started until now thinking about how we could apply AI to the very human, very business process part of it. And so, that will keep slowing us down until we find a way to to address it, right?
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Humans max out at three or four hours of really hard deep work a day, so the eight hours of intense work executives ask for is not available.
And humans max out at about like 3 to 4 hours a day. Like really really hard deep work, right? Um which always makes me laugh when executives are like, "We need 8 hours of intense work."
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Fast feedback is no longer straightforwardly good: agent-speed loops make you rebuild your mental model dozens of times in half an hour.
Well, now I'm getting feedback so quickly that I'm having to sometimes rebuild my mental model dozens of times in like a 30-minute period.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Flow is a people problem before it is a tooling problem — it needs clear direction, scope and purpose, which no tool supplies.
Uh well, tech is easy, people are hard. And so, you know, sometimes getting the flow really is about understanding what I'm doing, having very clear direction and goals and and knowing what my what my work is doing.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
A handful of AI agents is not a handful of colleagues, because agents agree with you constantly and colleagues tell you where you are wrong.
We may have a handful of genies, but that's different from having a handful of friends, right? In part because the energy's different, the conversations are different. Also, they just agree with us constantly.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
You cannot state the problem clearly without first trying and getting it wrong; the effort that looks wasted is how the thesis gets found.
Oh, I agree. You know, one is being able to clearly articulate the problem or the thesis or the idea. Without trying, I don't get there.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Teams that trade quality for speed well never describe it that way — they make an explicit, bounded, risk-based decision.
Some teams can, and but when they do it, they're doing it very, very intentionally. They don't say they're sacrificing quality. They say they're making a risk-based decision.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Adoption is worth measuring first despite being a bad metric, because developers are cranky enough not to use a tool that is awful.
I I will say I tend to start with adoption. I am not a fan of an adoption metric. I don't like it, but also devs are like a gloriously cranky bunch.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
You cannot mandate a tool developers dislike — they will quietly spin up the one they wanted.
I'm going to sound old when I say this, but like I one time had a company tell me, "Oh, well, they have to use that CI/CD system." I'm like 20 bucks, they're just spinning up Jenkins. And they were, right?
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Explicit executive sponsorship is what makes people try AI tools, because what stops them is fear of being blamed for using them.
And so, um I'm seeing across at least a handful of companies that explicit exec sponsorship makes a huge difference in not just using them, but trying new things and feeling safe to fail within, you know, kind of guardrails.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
Working too hard is not burnout, it is tiredness; burnout needs your values to be out of alignment with the work.
It's working too hard, right? But that actually isn't burnout. That's just like getting tired. Another piece that's super critical to burnout is not having your values aligned.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
A future where agents run and improve an organisation is impossible unless humans can first see and understand the system themselves.
For that to be true, agents need to be able to see and understand the system. And agents need to be able to improve the things that need fixed. For that to be true, humans need to be able to see and understand the system and then take action to fix it. Uh and for that to be true, we got to see the system.
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
The front end of software work has already collapsed into rapid prototyping, and part of the outer loop will collapse next.
right now, that whole front end has been like kind of smooshed because many times we can just like prototype really really rapidly and kind of solidify some of what we're thinking in terms of like ideas and coding. So I fully expect that part of the outer loop is just going to be collapsed as well, right?
Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summit Said 22 Mar 2026
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Recommends rcmnd
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Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Liked Jura coffee maker
Another one is a Jura coffee maker. I'd love good coffee and I'm not great at making it. So, I can just push the button and it'll give me anything I want, including like lattes, cappuccinos, or anything. So, that's kind of fun.
youtube.com 19 Oct 2025
Loved The Undoing Project
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. Uh Matt Velos recommended it to me and it's so good.
youtube.com 19 Oct 2025
Loved How Big Things Get Done
I will say I love how big things get done. I can't pronounce the name. I think one's they're Scandinavian. One is um but it's it kind of dissects really large projects through recentish history and where they failed and why.
youtube.com 19 Oct 2025
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Back mechanic by Stuart McIll is incredible.
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Liked Never Have I Ever
I just tore through never have I ever which is fun because John Mcenroe narrates it
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Loved Ted Lasso
Loved Ender's Game
the last one is probably Ender's Game horses got card um no comment right now on uh some of his political commentary but I used to have extra copies in my office when I was a professor and I would just hand it out to my students it's a fun like just easy nonsense read but I absolutely love it
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Recommends Designing Your Life
another one is designing your life by uh Bill Burnett and Dave Abbott Dave Evans
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Recommends Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called good strategy bad strategy by Richard rumelt
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Where they publish
Site nicolefv.com Her site: the research, the books and the talks.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026.
x.com @nicolefv Posts.
Recent
- I'm hiring a Data Scientist! You'll define the analytical strategy for how Gemini & agentic capabilities are transforming software eng-at Google scale. You'll pioneer new methods, surface insights, & help shape how we understand AI-driven development 15 Apr 2026 google.com
- @Chase please figure out your app auth/verification - when it fails and you offer no other option, we get stuck. (Please also offer an option to email so I don't have to tweet.) 10 Dec 2025
- AI broke our developer productivity metrics. Lines of code? Meaningless Commits? Not the point Velocity? Can be misleading We need new frameworks for measuring DevEx in the age of AI. Chapter 59 of Frictionless (w/ @abinoda) walks through exactly this: 20 Nov 2025 amazon.com
Show 7 more
- Today's the day! 🎉 Frictionless, coauthored w/@abinoda, helps you * Make the biz case for DevEx * Measure what actually matters (esp w/ AI in the mix) * Navigate org politics & exec comms * Implement change that sticks 18 Nov 2025 lnkd.in
- In today’s MSR Research Focus: Generative Expert Metric System (GEMS) with Ti-Chung Chang @denaefordrobin @christianbird @tomzimmermann Carmen Badea Rob Deline 13 Sept 2024
- Super excited to be working on a new DevEx book with @abinoda. We’re pulling from experience across 100s of companies, do’s & don’t’s, lessons learned. What are your biggest Qs? 24 Jun 2024 developerexperiencebook.com
- if the answer is yes i don't wanna know 15 May 2024
- Apparently it’s fine to just give yourself a title (which may or may not be wildly inflated, sure, why not)… What should my new job title be? 8 May 2024
- Currently sitting between THREE people listening to videos, music, and a phone call on speaker phone. I’m gonna start carrying disposable headphones so I can hand them out like Halloween candy. 28 Mar 2024
- I’m not crying you’re crying (I’m 100% crying in this restaurant 😭😭😭) 27 Mar 2024
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