korrents

Nicole Forsgren

@nicole-forsgren · 18 positions · 0 changes of mind

Researcher of software delivery performance, co-author of "Accelerate" and of the DORA, SPACE and DevEx frameworks, and author of "Frictionless".

Nicole Forsgren did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  1. Our reading

    AI did not create the bottlenecks in software delivery; it threw gas on processes everybody already knew were weak.

    Their wordsThere 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 2:18 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 1st of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    AI sped up the part of software work we could see, and it is the delivery systems downstream that are now being overwhelmed.

    Their wordsAnd 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 2:42 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 2nd of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  5. Our reading

    Review became a worse bottleneck under AI, because companies removed the review automation they had once AI started writing the code.

    Their wordsAnd 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 3:17 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 3rd of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  7. Our reading

    Release management is human group sense-making, and it does not scale to the volume of change AI now produces.

    Their wordsso 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 3:51 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 4th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    The processes organisations build to make work uniform are usually the same processes that slow the work down.

    Their wordsOr 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 5:22 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 5th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  11. Our reading

    Delivery will keep being slow until companies apply AI to the human, business-process half of it, not just to coding.

    Their wordsa 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?
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 5:41 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 6th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    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.

    Their wordsAnd 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."
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 9:06 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 7th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  15. Our reading

    Fast feedback is no longer straightforwardly good: agent-speed loops make you rebuild your mental model dozens of times in half an hour.

    Their wordsWell, 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 10:50 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 8th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  17. Our reading

    Flow is a people problem before it is a tooling problem — it needs clear direction, scope and purpose, which no tool supplies.

    Their wordsUh 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 12:39 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 9th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  19. Our reading

    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.

    Their wordsWe 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 13:14 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 10th of 18 in this recording

    energyAI agents

    Interesting

  21. Our reading

    You cannot state the problem clearly without first trying and getting it wrong; the effort that looks wasted is how the thesis gets found.

    Their wordsOh, 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 15:57 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 11th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    Teams that trade quality for speed well never describe it that way — they make an explicit, bounded, risk-based decision.

    Their wordsSome 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 20:00 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 12th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  25. Our reading

    Adoption is worth measuring first despite being a bad metric, because developers are cranky enough not to use a tool that is awful.

    Their wordsI 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 23:12 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 13th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  27. Our reading

    You cannot mandate a tool developers dislike — they will quietly spin up the one they wanted.

    Their wordsI'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?
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 23:30 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 14th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  29. Our reading

    Explicit executive sponsorship is what makes people try AI tools, because what stops them is fear of being blamed for using them.

    Their wordsAnd 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 25:44 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 15th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  31. Our reading

    Working too hard is not burnout, it is tiredness; burnout needs your values to be out of alignment with the work.

    Their wordsIt'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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 28:05 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 16th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  33. Our reading

    A future where agents run and improve an organisation is impossible unless humans can first see and understand the system themselves.

    Their wordsFor 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.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 29:27 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 17th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting

  35. Our reading

    The front end of software work has already collapsed into rapid prototyping, and part of the outer loop will collapse next.

    Their wordsright 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?
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 30:41 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗Nicole Forsgren: Leading high-performing engineering teams in the age of AI - The Pragmatic Summityoutube.com 18th of 18 in this recording

    Interesting