What We Learned Taking a Culture-First Approach to AI Adoption at scale
Most AI transformation stories focus on tooling, targets, and adoption curves. At Culture Amp, our primary focus was people and culture. We still wanted to drive and accelerate our impact, but we weren’t willing to compromise on our focus on people to get there. We then partnered with an engineering analytics firm to measure whether our approach actually made a difference.
This is a co-presentation from Culture Amp’s Director of Developer Experience and Director of Engineering Enablement. Having both roles in an org our size is an unusual choice, and it signals how seriously we take people and culture alongside technical delivery. Together, we helped lead an AI rollout grounded in trust over mandates, enablement over directives, and learning loops over training checklists.
We’ll walk through what we built: a rollout shaped by pioneers and champions, rituals designed around psychological safety, hack days and storytelling that made experimentation feel normal. We’ll share the data from a six-month research program across 88 engineers, tracking DORA metrics, adoption telemetry, and developer sentiment against industry benchmarks.
PR sizes stayed flat while merge frequency climbed, which runs counter to the industry trend of AI-inflated code volume. Code review engagement went up, not down. 39% of engineers reported faster delivery. But we’ll also be honest about what didn’t work: MTTR increased post-rollout, decentralised messaging created confusion, and out-of-hours commits rose. Even with our people focus, we were moving faster than was comfortable for everyone, and we had to own that tension.
We’re not presenting a blueprint. We’re sharing what happened when we tried to go as fast as we could without losing sight of the people doing the work. If you’ve been wondering whether investing in engineering culture pays off during an AI transformation, we think you’ll find this useful.
Eric Grigson
Eric is Director of Developer Experience at Culture Amp, where he leads high-performing engineering teams through a unique blend of data-driven insights and trust-based leadership. He has pioneered innovative approaches to measuring and improving developer productivity, consistently finding ways to correlate technical practices with broader engagement metrics. He is particularly passionate about creating environments where engineers can achieve deep work and maintain creative flow states. When not optimising developer experiences, he can be found exploring Merri Creek with his dog, scaling walls at his local bouldering gym, or catching indie bands at live venues around Melbourne.
Paul Hughes
Paul is Director of Engineering Enablement at Culture Amp, where he shapes the cultural fabric of a 200-person engineering organisation navigating the biggest transformation of its existence. After coming through health challenges early in his career, Paul discovered a deep passion for helping people thrive at work and has spent a decade focused on the kind of leadership and culture that enables people to flourish while achieving remarkable things. At Culture Amp, he has helped shape the “Evolve at Pace“ enablement approach, rethought hiring practices for the AI era, and builds the rituals and rhythms that turn strategic intent into lived engineering culture. Outside work, you’ll find him with his wife and two teenage daughters, taking on physical challenges, or writing his book “Love Your Team“ on the role of love in leadership.