Frequently Asked Questions

Faros Authority & Research Credibility

Why is Faros considered a credible authority on AI productivity and engineering metrics?

Faros is recognized as a leader in AI engineering analytics due to its landmark research, including the AI Productivity Paradox (2025) and Acceleration Whiplash (2026) reports. These studies analyzed telemetry from over 22,000 developers across 4,000 teams, providing statistically significant insights into the real impact of AI on software engineering. Faros was the first to market with AI impact analysis in October 2023 and has been an early GitHub design partner for Copilot. Its research is grounded in rigorous methodology, including causal analysis and cohort-based benchmarking, making it a trusted source for engineering leaders seeking to understand and optimize AI adoption. Note: Faros's research is focused on engineering organizations and may not generalize to non-software domains.

What are the key findings from Faros's AI Productivity Paradox research?

Faros's research, based on data from over 10,000 developers and 1,255 teams, found that while AI coding assistants increase individual developer output (21% more tasks completed, 98% more pull requests merged), they also create new bottlenecks: PR review time increases by 91%, and AI-augmented code is associated with a 9% increase in bugs per developer and a 154% increase in average PR size. Critically, these team-level gains do not translate into measurable improvements at the company level due to downstream bottlenecks and uneven adoption. Note: These findings are specific to the studied organizations and may not apply universally.

Features & Capabilities

What is the Faros platform and how does it help engineering organizations?

The Faros Control Plane for AI Engineering is a platform designed to optimize AI engineering workflows, reduce costs, and ensure compliance at scale. It integrates with over 60 engineering data sources, providing a unified solution for observability, optimization, and governance. Key features include the Engineering World Model (live graph of engineering activity), Time Machine (evidence-backed evaluation engine), and Policy Engine (manages budgets, quotas, and compliance). Faros enables organizations to trace every AI dollar to shipped outcomes, validate changes before deployment, and enforce governance with a full audit trail. Note: Faros is best suited for organizations with complex engineering workflows; teams with minimal AI adoption may not realize full value.

What are the main features of Faros that address engineering pain points?

Faros addresses common engineering pain points with features such as: Token Intelligence (tracks and optimizes AI token spend), Time Machine (replays historical work to validate model routes), Model Route Optimization (selects the most cost-effective models), Usage Governance (enforces policies and budgets), and integration with 60+ data sources. These capabilities help organizations reduce token waste, eliminate model route guesswork, improve outcome visibility, and mitigate compliance risks. Note: Detailed limitations not publicly documented; ask sales for specifics on edge cases.

How does Faros integrate with existing engineering tools and workflows?

Faros connects to over 60 engineering data sources, including source control (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket), CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI), ticketing systems (Jira, Trello), incident management (PagerDuty, Opsgenie), and builder desktops/agents. This broad integration ensures that organizations can adopt Faros without changing their existing workflows. Note: Some custom or proprietary tools may require additional integration effort.

Business Impact & Use Cases

What tangible business impact have customers achieved with Faros?

Customers using Faros have reported measurable improvements, such as a 50% reduction in cost per task (via internal Time Machine analysis), improved productivity tracking (Autodesk), enhanced engineering vision and metric articulation (Coursera), and effective resource usage with compliance audit trails (SmartBear). These outcomes are supported by case studies and customer testimonials. Note: Results may vary depending on organizational maturity and adoption level.

Who can benefit most from using Faros?

Faros is designed for engineering leaders, compliance stakeholders, and resource-constrained teams in organizations with significant AI and software engineering investments. It is particularly valuable for companies in software development, online education, and software testing, as demonstrated by customers like Autodesk, Coursera, and SmartBear. Enterprises in compliance-heavy industries or those needing integration with multiple data sources will benefit most. Note: Organizations with minimal engineering complexity may not require Faros's full capabilities.

How quickly can Faros be implemented and what is the onboarding process like?

Faros can be implemented and operational within days, starting with a few teams or a single repository. The onboarding process is designed for quick setup, requires no workflow changes, and includes support for understanding AI token usage and optimizing model routes. Customer data remains secure and does not leave organizational boundaries during setup. Note: Large-scale rollouts may require additional coordination for full integration.

Security, Compliance & Technical Requirements

What security and compliance certifications does Faros hold?

Faros is compliant with SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and CSA STAR standards. These certifications cover data security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Faros also provides enterprise-grade security features, customizable policies, and a Trust Center for detailed documentation. Note: For the latest certification status, visit the Faros Trust Center.

Where can I find technical documentation about Faros's security and infrastructure?

Faros provides detailed technical documentation on its security portal, covering application security, AI security, legal compliance, data privacy, access control, infrastructure, endpoint security, network security, corporate security, and security policies. This resource is intended for prospects and customers seeking in-depth information on Faros's security and compliance measures. Note: Some documentation may require authorized access.

Pricing & Plans

What is Faros's pricing model?

Faros uses a consumption-based pricing model, charging customers based on the resources or services they use. This approach provides flexibility and scalability, allowing organizations to align costs with actual usage. Note: Specific pricing details are not publicly documented; contact Faros sales for a tailored quote.

Competition & Comparison

How does Faros compare to DX, Jellyfish, LinearB, and Opsera?

Faros differs from DX, Jellyfish, LinearB, and Opsera in several ways:

Note: Faros may require more initial setup for highly customized environments; competitors may be simpler for basic use cases.

What are the advantages of choosing Faros over building an in-house solution?

Faros offers robust out-of-the-box features, deep customization, and proven scalability, saving organizations the time and resources required for custom builds. Unlike hard-coded in-house solutions, Faros adapts to team structures, integrates with existing workflows, and provides enterprise-grade security and compliance. Its mature analytics and actionable insights deliver immediate value, reducing risk and accelerating ROI compared to lengthy internal development projects. Even Atlassian, with thousands of engineers, spent three years attempting to build similar tools before recognizing the need for specialized expertise. Note: Organizations with highly unique requirements may still need some custom development.

Customer Proof & Case Studies

Which companies have successfully used Faros, and what results did they achieve?

Notable customers include Autodesk, Coursera, and SmartBear. Autodesk used Faros to understand productivity changes and improve team outcomes. Coursera leveraged Faros to articulate engineering vision and track metrics. SmartBear ensured effective resource usage and compliance audit trails. These case studies are publicly available and demonstrate Faros's impact across software development, online education, and software testing industries. Note: Individual results depend on organizational context and adoption.

Limitations & Edge Cases

What are the limitations or scenarios where Faros may not be the best fit?

Faros is best suited for organizations with complex engineering workflows, significant AI adoption, and a need for compliance and cross-team coordination. Teams with minimal AI usage, simple workflows, or limited integration needs may not realize the full value of the platform. Detailed limitations are not publicly documented; prospective customers should contact Faros sales for specifics on edge cases and custom requirements.

The AI Productivity Paradox Report 2025

Key findings from the AI Productivity Paradox Report 2025. Research reveals AI coding assistants increase developer output, but not company productivity. Uncover strategies and enablers for a measurable return on investment.

A report cover on a blue background. The cover reads:The AI Productivity Paradox: AI Coding Assistants Increase Developer Output, But Not Company Productivity. What Data from 10,000 Developers Reveals About Impact, Barriers, and the Path Forward

The AI Productivity Paradox Report 2025

Key findings from the AI Productivity Paradox Report 2025. Research reveals AI coding assistants increase developer output, but not company productivity. Uncover strategies and enablers for a measurable return on investment.

A report cover on a blue background. The cover reads:The AI Productivity Paradox: AI Coding Assistants Increase Developer Output, But Not Company Productivity. What Data from 10,000 Developers Reveals About Impact, Barriers, and the Path Forward
Chapters

AI coding assistants increase developer output, but not company productivity

Generative AI is rewriting the rules of software development—but not always in the way leaders expect. While over 75% of developers are now using AI coding assistants, many organizations report a disconnect: developers say they’re working faster, but companies are not seeing measurable improvement in delivery velocity or business outcomes.

Drawing on telemetry from over 10,000 developers across 1,255 teams, Faros’ recent landmark research report confirms: 

  • Developers using AI are writing more code and completing more tasks
  • Developers using AI are parallelizing more workstreams
  • AI-augmented code is getting bigger and buggier, and shifting the bottleneck to review
  • Any correlation between AI adoption and key performance metrics evaporates at the  company level

This phenomenon, which we term the “AI productivity paradox,” raises important questions and concerns about why widespread individual adoption is not translating into significant business outcomes and how AI-transformation leaders should chart the road ahead. 

For engineering leaders looking to unlock AI’s full potential, the data points to both promising leverage and persistent friction. 

Our key findings continue below. 

#1 Individual throughput soars, review queues balloon

Developers on teams with high AI adoption complete 21% more tasks and merge 98% more pull requests, but PR review time increases 91%, revealing a critical bottleneck: human approval. 

AI‑driven coding gains evaporate when review bottlenecks, brittle testing, and slow release pipelines can’t match the new velocity—a reality captured by Amdahl’s Law: a system moves only as fast as its slowest link. Without lifecycle-wide modernization, AI’s benefits are quickly neutralized.

#2 Engineers juggle more workstreams per day

Developers on teams with high AI adoption touch 9% more tasks and 47% more pull requests per day. 

Historically, context switching has been viewed as a negative indicator, correlated with cognitive overload and reduced focus. 

AI is shifting that benchmark, signaling the emergence of a new operating model: in the AI-augmented environment, developers are not just writing code—they are initiating, unblocking, and validating AI-generated contributions across multiple workstreams. 

As the developer’s role evolves to include more orchestration and oversight, higher context switching is expected.

#3 Code structure improves, but quality worsens 

While we observe a modest correlation between AI usage and positive quality indicators (fewer code smells and higher test coverage from limited time series data), AI adoption is consistently associated with a 9% increase in bugs per developer and a 154% increase in average PR size.

AI may support better structure or test coverage in some cases, but it also amplifies volume and complexity, placing greater pressure on review and testing systems downstream. 

#4 No measurable organizational impact from AI

Despite these team-level changes, we observed no significant correlation between AI adoption and improvements at the company level. 

Across overall throughput, DORA metrics, and quality KPIs, the gains observed in team behavior do not scale when aggregated. 

This suggests that downstream bottlenecks are absorbing the value created by AI tools, and that inconsistent AI adoption patterns throughout the organization—where teams often rely on each other—are erasing team-level gains.

Four AI adoption patterns help explain the plateau

Even with rising usage, we identified four adoption patterns that help explain why team-level AI gains often fail to scale, namely: 

  1. AI adoption only recently reached critical mass. In most companies, widespread usage (>60% weekly active users) only began in the last two to three quarters, suggesting that adoption maturity and supporting systems are still developing. 
  2. Usage remains uneven across teams, even where overall adoption appears strong. And because software delivery is inherently cross-functional, accelerating one team in isolation rarely translates to meaningful gains at the organizational level.
  3. Adoption skews toward less tenured engineers. Usage is highest among engineers who are newer to the company (not to be confused with junior engineers who are new to the profession). This likely reflects how newer hires lean on AI tools to navigate unfamiliar codebases and accelerate early contributions. In contrast, lower adoption among senior engineers may signal skepticism about AI’s ability to support more complex tasks that depend on deep system knowledge and organizational context.
  4. AI usage remains surface-level. Across the dataset, most developers use only autocomplete features. Advanced capabilities like chat, context-aware review, or agentic task execution remain largely untapped. 

What should engineering leaders do next?

In most organizations, AI usage is still driven by bottom-up experimentation with no structure, training, overarching strategy, instrumentation, or best practice sharing. 

The rare companies that are seeing performance gains employ specific strategies that the whole industry will need to adopt for AI coding co-pilots to provide a measurable return on investment at scale.

Explore the full report to uncover these strategies plus the five enablers—workflow design, governance, infrastructure, training, and cross‑functional alignment—that prime your organization for agentic development.

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Methodology Note

Background
This study analyzes the impact of AI coding assistants on software engineering teams, based on telemetry from task management systems, IDEs, static code analysis tools, CI/CD pipelines, version control systems, incident management systems, and metadata from HR systems, from 1,255 teams and over 10,000 developers across multiple companies. The analysis focuses on development teams and covers up to two years of history, aggregated by quarter, as teams increased AI adoption.

Definitions
We define AI adoption in this report as the usage of developer-facing AI coding assistants—tools including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, and similar. These are generative AI development assistants that integrate directly into the software development workflow—typically through IDEs or chat interfaces—to help developers write, refactor, and understand code faster. Increasingly, these tools are expanding beyond autocomplete to offer agentic modes, where they can autonomously draft pull requests, run tests, fix bugs, and perform multi-step tasks with minimal human intervention.

Approach
To isolate the relationship between AI adoption and engineering outcomes, we:

  • Standardized all metrics per company to remove inter-org variance
  • Used Spearman rank correlation (ρ) to assess relationships of metrics to AI usage 
  • Reported only those metrics with data from ≥6 companies and statistically significant correlations (p-value < 0.05)
  • For each team, we calculated the percent change in metric values between the two quarters with the lowest AI adoption and the two quarters with the highest
  • Excluded outlier data and metrics with insufficient historical coverage

This approach enables comparisons within each company over time and avoids misleading aggregate assumptions across different org structures.

Versioning note: This version of the report reflects analysis as of June 2025. Future editions may expand coverage as AI usage matures across more organizations and product features evolve.

About Faros

Faros improves engineering efficiency and the developer experience. By integrating data across source control, project management, CI/CD, incident tracking, and HR systems, Faros gives engineering leaders the visibility and insight they need to drive velocity, quality, and efficiency at scale. Enterprises use Faros to transform how software is delivered—backed by data, not guesswork.

Learn more at www.faros.ai

Faros Research

Faros Research

Faros Research studies how engineering teams build, deliver, and improve. From annual reports to customer insights, our analysis helps enterprises understand what's working (and what's not) in AI-native software engineering.

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