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The SURGE FRAMEWORK
Estimates & Measure AI ROI. With SURGE Framework.
SURGE is Hivel's measurement framework for AI engineering investment. Five pillars, one full picture from spend to shipped code, powered by real telemetry across 100,000+ engineers. Built for engineering teams.
The framework
Five pillars. One measurement model. Real engineering data.
SURGE measures the full value chain from AI investment to delivered outcome. Each pillar answers a question your current dashboards can't.
Spend
Total spend across licenses, tokens, infrastructure, and model mix. The denominator every ROI conversation needs.
Utilization
Active AI users, adoption depth, idle licenses, usage by task. Where seats sit empty and where adoption is real.
Recovery
Idle-license waste, license overlap, wrong-model spend, over-commit gaps. The recoverable dollars hiding in your contracts.
Gains
AI-attributed merged code, cost per change, feature throughput. What the spend produced in the codebase.
Efficiency
Lead time, throughput, rework, change failure rate. Whether the engineering system itself got better.
Benchmark findings
What 100,000+ engineers reveal about AI ROI.
Four numbers from the SURGE benchmark dataset. Every figure pulled from real customer telemetry, not survey estimates.
of paid AI licenses show near-zero activity
UTILIZATION
in recoverable AI spend left on the table annually per org
RECOVERY
of merged production code is AI-attributed
GAINS
higher throughput in top-quartile SURGE teams
EFFICIENCY
The problem
AI spend hit the board. No engineering org can prove what it returned.
Vendor dashboards report seat counts. Survey-based ROI frameworks estimate based on assumptions. Neither connects AI dollars to delivered code, recovered waste, or measurable engineering output. By the time the renewal conversation arrives, the data still doesn't exist.
Adoption isn't the same as outcome
A developer with Copilot enabled is counted as a user. Whether they merged AI-assisted code, how often, and with what delivery effect is a separate question entirely.
Estimates can't survive a CFO conversation
Survey-based ROI calculators give you a number derived from assumptions. When Finance asks for the underlying data, the methodology can't withstand scrutiny. Telemetry-grounded measurement can.
Waste hides in five different places
Idle licenses, overlapping tools, wrong-model spend, over-committed contracts, zombie agents. Each is invisible alone. Together they consume a real share of every AI budget.
The questions Jira reports can't answer. Investment Profile can.
Spend
Which work type is eating your sprints?
Every sprint hides a ratio. Roadmap stories, bugs, and ad-hoc tasks fight for the same capacity. Investment Profile breaks it down by issue type so you see what's consuming the team, not just ticket count.
Know more
Utilization
Which work type is eating your sprints?
Every sprint hides a ratio. Roadmap stories, bugs, and ad-hoc tasks fight for the same capacity. Investment Profile breaks it down by issue type so you see what's consuming the team, not just ticket count.
Know more
Recovery
Which work type is eating your sprints?
Every sprint hides a ratio. Roadmap stories, bugs, and ad-hoc tasks fight for the same capacity. Investment Profile breaks it down by issue type so you see what's consuming the team, not just ticket count.
Know more
Gain
Which work type is eating your sprints?
Every sprint hides a ratio. Roadmap stories, bugs, and ad-hoc tasks fight for the same capacity. Investment Profile breaks it down by issue type so you see what's consuming the team, not just ticket count.
Know more
Efficiency
Which work type is eating your sprints?
Every sprint hides a ratio. Roadmap stories, bugs, and ad-hoc tasks fight for the same capacity. Investment Profile breaks it down by issue type so you see what's consuming the team, not just ticket count.
Know more
What teams shipped after measuring AI with SURGE.
Real, attributed customer outcomes. Approved public proof points.
more features shipped 26% fewer hotfixes
Freshworks · Gains
faster release cycles
AvidXchange · Efficiency
faster cycle time
Sopra Steria · Efficiency
Frequently asked questions
What does SURGE stand for?
Spend, Utilization, Recovery, Gains, Efficiency — five pillars that measure the full value chain from AI investment to delivered engineering output. The E does double duty as the audience anchor: the framework is built for engineering teams.
How is SURGE different from DORA's ROI framework?
DORA's framework is a calculator powered by survey-based assumptions. SURGE replaces those assumptions with real telemetry from 100,000+ engineers — the output is a measured benchmark, not an estimate. We adopt DORA's amplifier thesis and J-curve directly, then measure what DORA could only estimate.
What does Hivel mean by "recoverable" AI spend?
Recovery aggregates five waste patterns most orgs can't see: idle licenses with near-zero activity, multiple paid tools on one seat where only one gets used, premium models used for low-value tasks, contracts committed above actual burn, and abandoned or zombie agents still calling APIs.
How does SURGE measure AI-attributed code without IDE telemetry?
Hivel's AI Code Telemetry classifies merged code as AI-generated or human-written directly from PR diffs — tool-agnostic, with no IDE plugin dependency. It catches contributions from Copilot, Cursor, Claude, and ChatGPT, including code pasted in from chat tools.
Is SURGE only for CTOs and engineering leaders?
No. Each pillar serves a specific audience. Spend and Recovery are Finance and Procurement conversations. Utilization and Gains are platform and engineering-leader conversations. Efficiency is the board conversation. The framework holds across all of them.
Trusted by 1000+ Engineering Teams
Vaibhav Bansal
V.P. Engineering
"Hivel has been phenomenal in helping us present our progress to leadership. Its insights into leading indicators have empowered our team leads to enhance review efficiency and ship features faster. Now, we are able to show the impact of our process changes, clearly identify areas of opportunity, and bring in a data-driven culture without spending time pulling manual reports."
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Murali Swaminathan
Chief Technology Officer
"We were looking for a unique solution to understand engineering productivity and efficiency, with a single tool that could give leaders complete visibility. We evaluated other comparable tools, but none were comprehensive enough. When we came across Hivel, it checked all the boxes for measuring developer productivity across both AI and non-AI workflows."
Derek Mackie
Director of Engineering
"Using Hivel shone a light on the non-standard aspects of our work, emphasizing the need for crucial adjustments. The insights from Hivel helped us recognize areas for improvement, particularly in managing cycle times and streamlining development workflows. This guidance has been instrumental in our efforts to enhance operational efficiency and productivity."
Leonardo Pinheiro Ferrari
Chief Technology Officer
"Thanks to Hivel, we've seen a staggering 157% improvement in our deployment frequency. By identifying and addressing inefficiencies, and adopting best practices, we've significantly accelerated our progress. Hivel has been instrumental in our journey to operational excellence."
Chris Callander
Senior Engineering Manager
"Hivel has been instrumental in identifying areas for enhancement and guiding our strategic improvements. It has significantly contributed to our journey toward greater operational efficiency. The Activity and Dev360 features in Hivel have been particularly valuable for providing feedback to engineers during 1-1's, enhancing our communication and development practices."
Shiro Theuri
Chief Technology Officer
"Before Hivel, understanding our engineering team's dynamics was a game of guesswork. Now, with Hivel's clear dashboards and insights, our leaders have the clarity and time-saving tools they need to excel. It's been transformative in streamlining our operations."
Koti Reddy
Chief Technology Officer
"Incorporating Hivel into our daily operations has been a game-changer. It's not just a tool; it's a part of our strategic decision-making process, trusted by our leaders at every level. The impact on our engineering efficiency is undeniable and deeply valued."
Manoj Awasthi
Chief Technology Officer
"It has been great to partner with Hivel to get access to insights that help leaders at all levels gain visibility into bottlenecks and challenges that the teams face, build actionable plan to resolve them and track the progress over time. And thanks for the fantastic support!"
Ameen M
Engineering Manager
"Hivel has made a huge difference to how I manage my teams. Before every one-on-one or appraisal, I rely on it to dive into developer metrics and drive truly meaningful conversations. It helps me spot rework patterns, reward high performers, and benchmark our teams even against our US counterparts. The dashboards are intuitive, insightful, and honestly far more actionable than anything we get from Jira."
Paras Sood
Associate Director
"Hivel's insights have been pivotal in refining our engineering processes, elevating both efficiency and the developer experience. We're now making smarter decisions, faster, thanks to Hivel."
Vaibhav Bansal
V.P. Engineering
"Hivel has been phenomenal in helping us present our progress to leadership. Its insights into leading indicators have empowered our team leads to enhance review efficiency and ship features faster. Now, we are able to show the impact of our process changes, clearly identify areas of opportunity, and bring in a data-driven culture without spending time pulling manual reports."
Murali Swaminathan
Chief Technology Officer
“We were looking for a unique solution to understand engineering productivity and efficiency, with a single tool that could give leaders complete visibility. We evaluated other comparable tools, but none were comprehensive enough. When we came across Hivel, it checked all the boxes for measuring developer productivity across both AI and non-AI workflows.”
Vaibhav Bansal
V.P. Engineering
"Hivel has been phenomenal in helping us present our progress to leadership. Its insights into leading indicators have empowered our team leads to enhance review efficiency and ship features faster. Now, we are able to show the impact of our process changes, clearly identify areas of opportunity, and bring in a data-driven culture without spending time pulling manual reports."
Derek Mackie
Director of Engineering
"Using Hivel shone a light on the non-standard aspects of our work, emphasizing the need for crucial adjustments. The insights from Hivel helped us recognize areas for improvement, particularly in managing cycle times and streamlining development workflows. This guidance has been instrumental in our efforts to enhance operational efficiency and productivity."
Leonardo Pinheiro Ferrari
Chief Technology Officer
"Thanks to Hivel, we've seen a staggering 157% improvement in our deployment frequency. By identifying and addressing inefficiencies, and adopting best practices, we've significantly accelerated our progress. Hivel has been instrumental in our journey to operational excellence."
"The only tool our entire leadership team actually trusts"
