High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
Method
Browse
How the evidence works

Public evidence record

Nicole Forsgren

Published podcast speaker

Claims
32
Episodes
2
Shows
1
Named items
7

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

Browse the grouped index →

book / likes

How Big Things Get Done

“It's kind of a random one. I will say I love How Big Things Get Done. I can't pronounce the names.”

Lenny's Podcast · 19 Oct 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

The Undoing Project

“Outlive by Peter Attia is fantastic. Another one that's I guess maybe related, I hurt my back so it's not great, Back Mechanic by Stuart McGill is incredible. Shout out to anyone who has hurt lower back. It's for a lay person to read through and figure out how to fix lower back problems. It's kind of a random one. I will say I love How Big Things Get Done. I can't pronounce the names. I think one's... There's Scandinavian, one is. It kind of dissects really large projects through recent-ish history and where they failed and why. And I think it's really interesting for us to think about, especially now in this AI moment where basically all of our at least software systems are going to be changing. So how do we think about approaching what is essentially going to be a very large project? And then, sorry, I'm going to throw in a bonus one, The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. Matt Velloso recommended it to me, and it's so good.”

Lenny's Podcast · 19 Oct 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / built

Accelerate

“" I wrote a book called Accelerate, which is the first four years of the research compiled and put together and expanded in a few things.”

Lenny's Podcast · 30 Jul 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / likes

How to Measure Anything

“One book that I love. It's a little dense, but it's really interesting that I love is How to Measure Anything.”

Lenny's Podcast · 30 Jul 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Ender's Game

“We actually had the perfect segue because the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Another one is Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Abbott... Dave Evans. And the last one is probably Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card. No comment right now on some of his political commentary, but I used to have extra copies in my office when I was a professor and I would just hand it out to my students. It's a fun, just easy nonsense read, but...”

Lenny's Podcast · 30 Jul 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Designing Your Life

“We actually had the perfect segue because the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Another one is Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Abbott... Dave Evans. And the last one is probably Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card. No comment right now on some of his political commentary, but I used to have extra copies in my office when I was a professor and I would just hand it out to my students. It's a fun, just easy nonsense read, but...”

Lenny's Podcast · 30 Jul 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

“We actually had the perfect segue because the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Another one is Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Abbott... Dave Evans. And the last one is probably Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card. No comment right now on some of his political commentary, but I used to have extra copies in my office when I was a professor and I would just hand it out to my students. It's a fun, just easy nonsense read, but...”

Lenny's Podcast · 30 Jul 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Nicole said.

32 transcript-backed records

01 / recommendation

Likes How Big Things Get Done. Recommends The Undoing Project.

“Outlive by Peter Attia is fantastic. Another one that's I guess maybe related, I hurt my back so it's not great, Back Mechanic by Stuart McGill is incredible. Shout out to anyone who has hurt lower back. It's for a lay person to read through and figure out how to fix lower back problems. It's kind of a random one. I will say I love How Big Things Get Done. I can't pronounce the names. I think one's... There's Scandinavian, one is. It kind of dissects really large projects through recent-ish history and where they failed and why. And I think it's really interesting for us to think about, especially now in this AI moment where basically all of our at least software systems are going to be changing. So how do we think about approaching what is essentially going to be a very large project? And then, sorry, I'm going to throw in a bonus one, The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. Matt Velloso recommended it to me, and it's so good.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / evaluation

I had a Calabrian. That was the best. Happy devs make happy code. They write better programs, they do better work, they're better team members and collaborators.

“I had a Calabrian. That was the best. Happy devs make happy code. They write better programs, they do better work, they're better team members and collaborators.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / evaluation

It helps us with market share, it helps us attract and retain customers, it helps us do all of these things. And I think DevEx is important because it enables all of that software creation, it enables all of that problem solving.

“It helps us with market share, it helps us attract and retain customers, it helps us do all of these things. And I think DevEx is important because it enables all of that software creation, it enables all of that problem solving.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / recommendation

DevEx is developer experience. And when we think about developer experience, we're really talking about what it's like to build software, day to day, for a developer.

“DevEx is developer experience. And when we think about developer experience, we're really talking about what it's like to build software, day to day, for a developer.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / prediction

We're still figuring out what the best flow state and cognitive requirements are for people in this because, to your point, sometimes we're getting interrupted all the time.

“We're still figuring out what the best flow state and cognitive requirements are for people in this because, to your point, sometimes we're getting interrupted all the time.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / recommendation

Now that our attention has to focus on things at certain times and it's broken up from how we used to do it, I think there's some real opportunity there to, not just rethink workflows, but rethink how we structure our days and how we structure our work.

“Now that our attention has to focus on things at certain times and it's broken up from how we used to do it, I think there's some real opportunity there to, not just rethink workflows, but rethink how we structure our days and how we structure our work.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / evaluation

Because it feels like it's just another internal project that isn't going to matter or that isn't going to get celebrated, but it has these huge upside potential returns for the business.

“Because it feels like it's just another internal project that isn't going to matter or that isn't going to get celebrated, but it has these huge upside potential returns for the business.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / evaluation

Because implied in that is feedback loops, right, because you used to kind of get feedback from customers. But we can't just use that blindly now when we're using AI, as an example, because we have feedback loops much earlier and not even just at the local build and test phase.

“Because implied in that is feedback loops, right, because you used to kind of get feedback from customers. But we can't just use that blindly now when we're using AI, as an example, because we have feedback loops much earlier and not even just at the local build and test phase.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / recommendation

I think there are a lot of ways that we can pull in AI tools to help us refine our strategy, refine our message, think about the experimentation methods or targets of experimentation, or think about our total addressable market, but we need to have that strategy and plan fairly well aligned or at least have two or three alternatives that you want to test.

“I think there are a lot of ways that we can pull in AI tools to help us refine our strategy, refine our message, think about the experimentation methods or targets of experimentation, or think about our total addressable market, but we need to have that strategy and plan fairly well aligned or at least have two or three alternatives that you want to test.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

18 / recommendation

Recommends Good Strategy Bad Strategy. Recommends Designing Your Life. Recommends Ender's Game.

“We actually had the perfect segue because the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. Another one is Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Abbott... Dave Evans. And the last one is probably Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card. No comment right now on some of his political commentary, but I used to have extra copies in my office when I was a professor and I would just hand it out to my students. It's a fun, just easy nonsense read, but...”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / belief

I think one of my superpowers and one of the things that I've been working with my teams on doing and kind of teaching them is, and one of the things that's really leveled up our work in general, is making your work incredibly accessible.

“I think one of my superpowers and one of the things that I've been working with my teams on doing and kind of teaching them is, and one of the things that's really leveled up our work in general, is making your work incredibly accessible.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

23 / recommendation

We actually had the perfect segue because the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt.

“We actually had the perfect segue because the book I've recommended absolutely the most is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

24 / recommendation

Make sure you pick metrics that are intention. And I could say it, but people have a hard time wrapping that around their heads because they kept picking things like number of lines of code, never picked number of lines of code.

“Make sure you pick metrics that are intention. And I could say it, but people have a hard time wrapping that around their heads because they kept picking things like number of lines of code, never picked number of lines of code.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

25 / preference

There's no such thing as not being in the cloud because if you cannot make it through bursting on demand, bursting like magic, sometimes I joke, right, you're not going to make it.

“There's no such thing as not being in the cloud because if you cannot make it through bursting on demand, bursting like magic, sometimes I joke, right, you're not going to make it.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

26 / observation

Will I have an over-reliance on it? And what we're seeing is that, probably unsurprisingly, people really fundamentally shift the way they work when they work with an AI-enabled tool like GitHub, Copilot, or Tabnine or others because now, instead of just writing code or having a short auto-complete, you spend more time reviewing code than writing code, right.

“Will I have an over-reliance on it? And what we're seeing is that, probably unsurprisingly, people really fundamentally shift the way they work when they work with an AI-enabled tool like GitHub, Copilot, or Tabnine or others because now, instead of just writing code or having a short auto-complete, you spend more time reviewing code than writing code, right.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

27 / evaluation

We actually had a SaaS offering, so we continued the State of DevOps Report just under the DORA banner, and we had a SaaS offering because so many large companies were like, "I want my own customized measurement, reading, and report.

“We actually had a SaaS offering, so we continued the State of DevOps Report just under the DORA banner, and we had a SaaS offering because so many large companies were like, "I want my own customized measurement, reading, and report.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

28 / commitment

I also had a master's in accounting because that really helped me make that kind of financial tie and understanding financial statements. And then, after a handful of years kind of walked away from tenure because academia was not convinced that DevOps was a thing, right, that DevOps wasn't real, and State of DevOps Report who I was doing with DORA, DevOps research and assessment in collaboration with Jez Humble and Gene Kim.

“I also had a master's in accounting because that really helped me make that kind of financial tie and understanding financial statements. And then, after a handful of years kind of walked away from tenure because academia was not convinced that DevOps was a thing, right, that DevOps wasn't real, and State of DevOps Report who I was doing with DORA, DevOps research and assessment in collaboration with Jez Humble and Gene Kim.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

29 / commitment

" I wrote a book called Accelerate, which is the first four years of the research compiled and put together and expanded in a few things.

“" I wrote a book called Accelerate, which is the first four years of the research compiled and put together and expanded in a few things.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

30 / evaluation

That's also a lie. So I think there are better ways to think about and deal with that and then try to work with it because and I wrote a paper with Mik Kersten on this several years ago on how data from people and data from systems are really important compliments because we can get certain insights from people that we'll never get from systems.

“That's also a lie. So I think there are better ways to think about and deal with that and then try to work with it because and I wrote a paper with Mik Kersten on this several years ago on how data from people and data from systems are really important compliments because we can get certain insights from people that we'll never get from systems.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

31 / preference

If I turn this into a sentence, what do they represent?" And then you want to double check because spurious correlation's one of my favorite websites instead of charts.

“If I turn this into a sentence, what do they represent?" And then you want to double check because spurious correlation's one of my favorite websites instead of charts.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

32 / preference

I will say I write things down because I get asked them so often, and I want to make sure it is broadly applicable or broadly available, I guess.

“I will say I write things down because I get asked them so often, and I want to make sure it is broadly applicable or broadly available, I guess.”
Speaker
Nicole Forsgren
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
Search evidence