ACM ByteCast Nicole Forsgren - Episode 81
Feb 4, 2026
Nicole Forsgren, Senior Director of Developer Intelligence at Google and co-founder of DORA, is a researcher who measures software delivery performance. She talks about improving internal developer systems and the origins of evidence-based DevOps. She outlines measuring developer work with surveys and the SPACE framework. She also explores adapting metrics and trust for AI and agent-driven workflows.
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Early IBM Crunch Sparked Research
- Nicole Forsgren recounted being asked to deliver two large projects in half the time at IBM, which stressed engineers and produced mediocre outcomes.
- That experience motivated her to search for better ways to organize software delivery and developer work.
PhD Shift Toward Sysadmin Ethnography
- Nicole described shifting her PhD focus to sysadmin work and leading IBM Research studies on how system administrators think and operate.
- That ethnographic work became core to her dissertation and later research into DevOps practices.
Surveys Reveal Hidden Outer-Loop Reality
- Forsgren used psychometric survey methods to measure otherwise unobservable outer-loop behaviors across teams and companies.
- Carefully designed latent-variable surveys let her map core capabilities that predict speed and stability.