Companies that trust Pensero.
For Andrew Eye, CEO and founder of ClosedLoop, excellence in engineering isn't about control or micromanagement. It's about clarity.
ClosedLoop builds machine-learning automation for healthcare with a highly skilled engineering team spanning frontend, backend, and AI/ML roles. As the company grew, Andrew began receiving feedback from the board that the team was among the slower-shipping companies in their portfolio.
The challenge wasn't whether that feedback was right or wrong. It was that Andrew had no concrete way to validate it, explain it, or show how the team was evolving.
“I was being told we were slow to ship, but I didn’t have any visibility as to why that was.”
The challenge
When transparency is missing, excellence stalls
Andrew wasn’t looking for a way to micromanage engineers. He was looking for the same level of clarity he already had in other parts of the business.
“If you wanted to know how sales was doing, I could show you pipeline. If you wanted to know how marketing was doing, I could show you conversion rates. But when it came to engineering, I couldn’t tell you if we were going faster or slower than before.”
Engineering productivity was the one area where leadership lacked a clear, shared reference point. Story points had been discussed and dismissed. Lines of code weren’t meaningful. DORA metrics helped with operational health, but didn’t explain individual contribution, learning, or coaching needs.
As a result, conversations about engineering performance were largely qualitative, making it difficult to respond to board feedback with confidence or to track progress over time.
Excellence in the age of humans and bots
The challenge became even more acute as AI entered the workflow. At ClosedLoop, engineers ranged from traditional developers to AI-empowered engineers, alongside bots capable of handling full coding cycles. Attribution quickly became less important than outcomes.
“At the team level, the only real question is: are we going faster?”
Andrew needed a way to measure performance in a world where humans and AI collaborate, without philosophical debates about who typed what, and without discouraging experimentation with new tools.
Why Pensero changed the conversation
Pensero immediately reframed how ClosedLoop thought about measurement. Instead of estimating work upfront, Pensero automatically analyzes real delivery without adding process overhead.
Andrew often summarizes it simply:
"Pensero is story points after the fact. With Pensero we go 4x faster"
Simplicity mattered: Engineers didn’t have to change how they worked. There was no planning poker, no arguments, no extra reporting. The work happened, and Pensero made its impact visible within days.
Just as important, the system felt fair. Scoring was consistent and performance was always viewed in context, that means over time and against peers.
Pensero was up and running in a day. Within the first week, the team already had meaningful signals.
For the first time, engineering performance became a shared, trusted reality.
The results
A team that goes 4× faster
Early visibility revealed wide performance variation across the team. Some engineers were operating at very high percentiles, while others lagged behind.
Instead of using that data punitively, leadership used it for coaching.
“The goal is not to fire below-average performers. The goal is to help them learn what our best people are doing.”
Those conversations worked. As workflows, tools, and best practices spread across the team, performance converged upward.
Team performance
80th
Entire team now above the 80th percentile
Delivery speed
4x
Four times faster than before
Excellence engineers choose
Rather than feeling monitored, engineers embraced the transparency. Pensero gave them proof of impact, a way to benchmark themselves globally, and a clear path to improvement in an AI-driven world.
“They love it because they get to brag. They can say they’re in the top 5 percent globally, based on an independent third party.”
It also changed how ClosedLoop attracts and retains talent. Pensero became a signal of ambition: a place for engineers who want to learn faster, adopt better tools, and work alongside other high performers.
“Pensero is why you want to work here.”
Transparency as a competitive advantage
For Andrew, Pensero ultimately delivers something rare in engineering organizations: honest visibility without micromanagement. It allows leadership to invest aggressively in AI tools, coaching, and growth while holding the team to a clear, shared standard of excellence.
“I’ll pay for every AI tool you want. What I ask in return is: show me how you’re going faster.”
At ClosedLoop, transparency isn’t about control. It’s about enabling engineers to become the best version of themselves, both individually and as a team.
That is their culture of excellence.
