Everything Product Podcast How to Fix Your Engineering Team's Velocity Problem
Product velocity ≠ just faster shipping.
In this episode of Everything Product, we sit down with Laura Taco, CTO at DX, to break down what engineering productivity really means — and why most orgs get it completely wrong.
We go deep into:
🔹 Why “just ship faster” is a broken mindset
🔹 The Core 4 Framework: Speed, Effectiveness, Quality, Innovation
🔹 Common traps: flashy dashboards, tool overload, data without literacy
🔹 How AI tools (like GitHub Copilot) are changing productivity metrics
🔹 How to measure and actually act on developer productivity signals
Meet Hosts:
Srinath - [https://www.linkedin.com/in/skotela/]
Phani - [https://www.linkedin.com/in/phanivuyyuru]
Sid - [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidsaladi/] [https://sidsaladi.substack.com/ [https://mobile.twitter.com/Sidsaladi]
💎 Here are more resources for you
🚀 The Ultimate PM Launch Pad - Blast Off Your Career Now! 🚀
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0KSCr65RCTOupMjArBvrML5VWUGzaKqt
🧰 Master the PM Toolkit - Equip Yourself for Success! 🧰
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0KSCr65RCTM4acJOjQYFvOVMzfiEFlqE
⚡️ Stay Ahead of the Tech Curve - Charge Your Knowledge Now! ⚡️
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0KSCr65RCTMvYe4lAYpfdbDoNdPbA33o
Whether you're a Product Manager, Engineering Leader, or Startup CTO, this conversation will change how you think about speed, scale, and building high-velocity teams.
🎧 Featuring:
Laura Taco (CTO, DX)
Phani Vuyyuru & Srinath Kotela (Hosts)
🔗 Resources + Core 4 survey → in the show notes
Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro: Who is Laura Taco & What is DX
2:00 – How Laura got into engineering productivity
4:30 – Why Engineering Productivity ≠ More PRs
6:00 – The true definition: Removing Friction
8:00 – Why Product Velocity is a Product + Engineering Problem
10:30 – Misuse of “Speed” and the velocity-direction trap
12:00 – Aligning Product & Engineering: Avoid the canoe problem
14:30 – Why teams measure but don't improve
17:00 – The real issue: data literacy dashboards
19:30 – Why PMs can lead data literacy efforts
21:00 – Should metrics be prescriptive or narrative-driven?
23:00 – Who owns engineering productivity in an org?
25:00 – The Core 4 Framework explained
28:00 – Speed: How to use (and not misuse) PR throughput
30:00 – Effectiveness: Developer Experience Index (DXI)
32:00 – Quality: Why Change Failure Rate still matters
33:00 – Innovation Ratio: What % of your time builds the future
35:00 – Internal benchmarking vs. toxic team comparisons
37:00 – How to interpret industry benchmarks
39:00 – Deploying Core 4 in 2 weeks, not 6 months
41:00 – How to combine qualitative + quantitative signals
43:00 – AI & Dev Productivity: The real impact (not hype)
47:00 – Stack trace analysis Codegen for AI productivity wins
49:00 – Final advice: Cultivate an experimental mindset
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