Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

AI tools are spreading across the entire software development lifecycle - but are they actually making developers more productive, or just adding noise? In this panel from Context Conference, Najla Elmachtoub (Squadformers) moderates a sharp, no-fluff conversation with Nathen Harvey (Google, DORA program), Bill Harding (GitClear), and Jeremy Castile (GitKraken) on what's really working when it comes to AI and developer experience.

GitKraken Desktop 12.0 Live: Agent Mode, Real Workflows, No Filters.

AI developer productivity, agentic workflows, and the lessons learned running engineering tools for 100,000+ software engineers at Google. John Montgomery, CCO at GitKraken, sits down with Asim Hussain, co-founder of Alterion AI and former Google VP of Engineering Productivity, to get real about what AI actually changes for engineering teams in 2025.

DORA metrics in the AI era reveal a paradox: PR volume is climbing, but deployment frequency is staying flat. In this talk, GitKraken's Director of Product Jeff Schinella breaks down why AI-accelerated code generation is creating a review bottleneck that your DORA metrics can't fully explain on their own. Jeff walks through how PR metrics (cycle time, first response time, code churn, and PR size) serve as the leading indicators behind your DORA data. If your deployment frequency is flat while PR counts go up, the bottleneck isn't your devs. It's your review capacity.

Developer experience predicts what's coming 3 to 6 months before it shows up in your delivery metrics. So why are most engineering leaders measuring it last? In this session, GitKraken VP of Developer Research Jeremy Castile breaks down what developer experience (DevX) actually is, how to measure it across 6 key dimensions, and how it connects to velocity, code quality, and AI impact data your team is already tracking.

Responsible AI adoption for engineering teams starts with culture, not compliance. In this GitKon talk, Rizel Scarlett (Tech Lead of Open Source DevRel at Block) shares how Block helped thousands of engineers actually want to use AI tools, including Goose, Cursor, Claude Code, and more, without mandates, vibe coding disasters, or security gaps.

AI writes code. But shipping to production? That still takes a software engineer. In this GitKon talk, Chris Kelly from Augment Code breaks down what it actually means to use AI-assisted development to write production-ready code, not vibe code. If you've been using AI coding assistants and wondering why the output doesn't always make it past code review, this is for you. Chris covers: Key takeaway: The engineers who will thrive aren't the ones who let AI do everything. They're the ones who know how to review, direct, and architect around what AI produces.

AI adoption is already happening on your team, whether you have a strategy or not. Tracy Lee (CEO of This Dot Labs, Microsoft MVP, Google Developer Expert) breaks down the AI Enablement Flywheel — a 6-pillar framework used by successful engineering organizations to move from scattered experimentation to scalable, ROI-positive AI workflows.