Frequently Asked Questions

Faros AI is a credible authority on software engineering intelligence, developer productivity, and DevOps analytics, as demonstrated by its proven impact on large-scale engineering organizations like SmartBear, Autodesk, and Vimeo. The platform delivers unified visibility, actionable insights, and measurable business outcomes for enterprises managing complex portfolios and thousands of engineers.

Features & Capabilities

What key features does Faros AI offer for engineering organizations?

Faros AI provides a unified platform that centralizes engineering metrics, integrates with diverse technology stacks, and offers customizable dashboards. Key features include AI-driven insights, seamless integration with existing tools, automation of processes like R&D cost capitalization, and advanced analytics for engineering productivity, software quality, and initiative tracking. The platform supports enterprise-grade scalability, handling thousands of engineers, 800,000 builds a month, and 11,000 repositories without performance degradation. Learn more.

Does Faros AI support integration with different technology stacks?

Yes, Faros AI is designed to integrate with diverse technology stacks and can be customized to fit your organization's taxonomy. This flexibility allows engineering organizations to centralize metrics and reporting across multiple products and teams, regardless of their individual workflows or tools. Read the SmartBear case study.

What APIs does Faros AI provide?

Faros AI offers several APIs, including the Events API, Ingestion API, GraphQL API, BI API, Automation API, and an API Library, enabling seamless data integration and automation across your engineering operations.

Use Cases & Benefits

What business impact can customers expect from using Faros AI?

Customers can expect measurable business impacts, including a 50% reduction in lead time, a 5% increase in efficiency, enhanced reliability and availability, and improved visibility into engineering operations. Faros AI enables faster, more predictable product releases, better resource allocation, and higher customer satisfaction. See customer stories.

Who can benefit from Faros AI?

Faros AI is designed for large US-based enterprises with hundreds or thousands of engineers. Target roles include VPs and Directors of Software Engineering, Developer Productivity leaders, Platform Engineering leaders, CTOs, Technical Program Managers, and Senior Architects. The platform addresses the needs of organizations seeking to optimize engineering productivity, software quality, AI transformation, talent management, DevOps maturity, initiative delivery, and developer experience.

How does Faros AI help address common pain points in engineering organizations?

Faros AI solves pain points such as bottlenecks in productivity, inconsistent software quality, challenges in AI adoption, talent management issues, DevOps maturity gaps, lack of initiative tracking, incomplete developer experience data, and manual R&D cost capitalization. The platform provides actionable insights, automates reporting, and enables data-driven decisions to optimize workflows and outcomes. Explore case studies.

What KPIs and metrics does Faros AI track?

Faros AI tracks a wide range of KPIs and metrics, including DORA metrics (Lead Time, Deployment Frequency, MTTR, CFR), team health, tech debt, software quality, PR insights, AI adoption and impact, workforce talent management, onboarding metrics, initiative tracking (timelines, cost, risks), developer sentiment, and automation metrics for R&D cost capitalization.

Customer Proof & Case Studies

How did SmartBear use Faros AI to scale software engineering and support rapid growth?

SmartBear leveraged Faros AI to centralize engineering metrics across 25 products, enabling unified visibility, enhanced predictability, and optimized resource allocation. The platform reduced reporting time from days to minutes, improved strategic planning, and helped identify over-investment in mature products. SmartBear also integrated customer satisfaction survey data from Salesforce into Faros, tracking ratings as key business outcomes. Read the full case study.

What benefits did SmartBear achieve by using Faros AI?

SmartBear achieved rapid growth, improved predictability, and boosted customer satisfaction by measuring outcomes with Faros AI. The centralized data enabled on-time product releases, streamlined reporting, and empowered teams to make fast, informed decisions. Learn more.

How does Faros AI support strategic planning and resource allocation?

Faros AI enables organizations like SmartBear to monitor portfolio performance, allocate strategic investments, and identify anomalies or outliers. The platform provides visibility into investment layers (roadmap, technical debt, compliance, quality) and business outcomes (productivity, predictability, customer satisfaction, uptime, security), helping leaders optimize resource allocation and respond quickly to staffing signals.

Where can I find more customer stories and case studies about Faros AI?

You can explore additional customer stories and case studies on the Faros AI blog at Faros AI Customer Stories.

Technical Requirements & Implementation

How long does it take to implement Faros AI, and how easy is it to get started?

Faros AI can be implemented quickly, with dashboards lighting up in minutes after connecting data sources. Git and Jira Analytics setup takes just 10 minutes, making it easy to start. Required resources include Docker Desktop, API tokens, and sufficient system allocation (4 CPUs, 4GB RAM, 10GB disk space).

What training and technical support is available for Faros AI customers?

Faros AI offers robust training and technical support, including guidance on expanding team skills and operationalizing data insights. Support options include an Email & Support Portal, a Community Slack channel, and a Dedicated Slack channel for Enterprise Bundle customers, ensuring smooth onboarding and troubleshooting.

Security & Compliance

What security and compliance certifications does Faros AI hold?

Faros AI is compliant with SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and CSA STAR certifications, demonstrating its commitment to robust security and compliance standards. The platform includes features like audit logging, data security, and secure integrations, adhering to enterprise standards by design. Learn more.

Product Information & Resources

Where can I find more information about Faros AI's products and solutions?

You can learn more about Faros AI's products and solutions by visiting the Platform page and exploring use cases such as Engineering Productivity, Developer Experience, DORA Metrics, Initiative Tracking, and Software Capitalization.

Does Faros AI have a blog with articles on AI and developer productivity?

Yes, Faros AI maintains a blog featuring articles and guides on AI, developer productivity, and the developer experience. Explore best practices, customer stories, and product updates at Faros AI Blog.

Where can I find the latest news and updates about Faros AI?

Visit the Faros AI News Blog for the latest product and press announcements.

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SmartBear’s Software Engineering Scales to Support Rapid Growth by Measuring Outcomes with Faros AI

Learn how SmartBear monitors portfolio investments to drive growth, improve predictability, and boost customer satisfaction

Naomi Lurie
Naomi Lurie
SmartBear's Software Engineering Scales to Support Rapid Growth by Measuring Outcomes with Faros AI banner image features Vineeta Puranik, SVP Engineering and Operations at SmartBear
10
min read
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November 1, 2023

Results

  • Unified visibility: Data from disparate teams and portfolios coalesced into a single, accessible platform.
  • Enhanced predictability: The centralized data analytics helped keep product deliveries on track, enabling on-time major product releases and increasing customer satisfaction.
  • Optimized resource allocation: Portfolio investment and outcome monitoring leads to data-driven resource allocation and informed decision-making.
  • Streamlined efficiency: Lead time and effort of reporting and data analysis decreased from days to minutes.
A quote by Vineeta Prunik, SVP of Engineering and Operations at SmartBear who says

Background

SmartBear is a leading provider of software development visibility tools, with the goal of helping software teams make each release better than the last. Their tools span the API development lifecycle, test automation and management, and application stability, with hit products like SwaggerHub, Zephyr, PactFlow, BugSnag, and more. They’re used by 16 million developers, testers, and operations engineers at 32,000+ organizations – including world-renowned innovators like Adobe, JetBlue, FedEx, and Microsoft.

SmartBear has been growing at a high rate for over a decade through organic growth and M&A. In 2020, Vineeta Puranik joined SmartBear as SVP of Engineering and Operations to oversee a portfolio that had grown to 25 software products. “As a developer myself, I love how I can relate to SmartBear products. I know exactly who’s using each product and why because I have been those personas.”

Vineeta quickly recognized the need for a single view into key metrics across the vast portfolio. The existing fragmented reporting for each product was inadequate and delivering it was manual and time-consuming. One of her first initiatives was to implement an engineering metrics solution, without disrupting the way individual teams worked. Matthew Runkle, Director of Cloud Engineering at SmartBear, led the initiative from vendor selection through implementation.

“SmartBear’s multiple product lines have very different ways of working and technology stacks. Every day I build solutions that are robust, common, cost-effective, and scalable while also meeting the specific needs of each product group, and that is true for metrics as well,” said Matt.

Centralizing software engineering intelligence on Faros AI

SmartBear’s scale was a trigger for seeking out a metrics solution. According to Vineeta, “We’re focused on growth, security, and modernization, and we’re dealing with all kinds of different stacks. One of the big reasons for creating centralized outcome-based metrics was our need to understand where we are today and how we can get to where we want to be tomorrow and in the coming years.”

SmartBear selected Faros AI for its ability to integrate with its diverse stack and be customized to its taxonomy. Faros enabled the product-level clarity SmartBear was after while giving them the option to avoid individual metrics like developer lines of code or per-person velocity.

Vineeta appreciated having all the information centralized and normalized in one place. “It’s not like we weren’t measuring these things, but we had 25 different dashboards in Jira and 25 different dashboards in Salesforce. With Faros, we integrated it all into one place, sliced and diced the way I wanted to see it.”

Optimizing portfolio investments

SmartBear monitors its portfolio’s performance through two lenses: BCG’s growth rate matrix and SmartBear product family. Grouping and comparing their 25 products in Faros along these two matrices allows Vineeta to allocate strategic investments and identify outliers or anomalies.

“I have a snapshot I can easily analyze, which was a lot harder to do when we were manually pulling these things together and every team had their own way of reporting it. I use the metrics to make sure we are using our resources effectively.”

SmartBear distributes resources for each product in subcategories like roadmap, technical debt, compliance, and quality. “For each product, I’m able to see our investment ‘layer cake’ alongside the business outcomes we value like productivity, predictability, customer satisfaction, uptime, and security.”

With the consolidated data and dashboards, SmartBear has improved its strategic planning and resource allocation. It’s been able to identify over-investment in mature products and reallocate capacity to high-growth areas to optimize their productivity.

“The visibility helps raise red flags and inform us if something is off in the way we are staffing the teams. We adjust our resources very quickly and efficiently based on those signals.”

Data-driven decisions lead to better predictability

SmartBear uses Faros to measure DORA metrics that cut across tools, which help ensure products are releasing consistently and frequently and identify areas that may be bottlenecked.

Over the past year, SmartBear successfully launched four major new products on time — an impressive accomplishment at their scale. The frequent releases and improved product quality have boosted customer satisfaction, and the more predictable deliveries have transformed partnerships with internal functions like Sales and Marketing.

Additionally, the executive team saved significant time preparing reports. Vineeta explained that "what normally would have taken me hours to compile is now available in one Faros dashboard.” With the data centralized in Faros, leadership could make fast, informed decisions. Ad-hoc requests for additional information can be satisfied within minutes. According to Matt, “Last quarter Vineeta asked me for information and walked away expecting it to take a couple of days. I was back in five minutes with all the data.”

Image features a quote by Matthew Runkle, Director of Cloud Engineering at SmartBear saying

Transparency through company-wide access

Faros dashboards are accessible to everyone at SmartBear, which provides transparency into how products are performing. Engineers can self-serve insights to improve their work. Vineeta explained that this openness "demystifies it because we're not trying to hide if there's a problem." They collectively solve issues using the same data. “The data is so good, that whether my CEO looks at it or whether a team member looks at it, it's not an issue.”

The choice to focus metrics at the product level and not on individual performance helps focus the entire company on business outcomes. It’s a future-proof approach as well, as Vineeta explained. “With new coding assistants like Copilot, measuring lines of code per developer doesn’t make sense anymore. We need metrics that can survive the test of time.”

Customization enabled by strong partnership

Both Vineeta and Matt credited collaboration with Faros as key to their progress. According to Matt, "The partnership with Faros has been fantastic. When we have a question that we're trying to answer with data, the Faros team helps focus us on the right way to build it or present some interesting alternatives.”

“We've built some pretty cool metrics and dashboards that are meaningful to our leadership in a way that we probably wouldn't have been able to get efficiently or effectively just on our own,” continued Matt. Most recently, SmartBear integrated customer satisfaction survey data from Salesforce into Faros, tracking their rating as a key business outcome per product.

Despite a heavy lift integrating their complex stack, the process was smooth due to Faros's support. Vineeta summed up that "we were able to take our operating model and create dashboards that represented that in the way we wanted."

The future looks bright with AI-infused metrics

With visibility in place, SmartBear is looking ahead to leveraging predictive capabilities and metrics that uncover problems and opportunities. Vineeta shared that they "...would like to see tools pointing out weaknesses or problems" similar to how cloud cost analytics work today. Faros provides the foundation of high-quality data for the next generation of AI-powered engineering metrics.

Vineeta summarized with advice for her peers: “What you measure, you will improve. So measure the right things and focus on business outcomes.”

Start your journey with Faros.ai

Naomi Lurie

Naomi Lurie

Naomi is head of product marketing at Faros AI.

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