With Pensero, Exoticca gained radical transparency into how AI is being used across engineering, reduced cycle time by 39%, and increased delivery by 140% while maintaining quality.

The company

Exoticca is a travel company that creates complete travel experiences rather than simply selling individual trips.

Its 55-person engineering organization is divided into five teams across two main areas: product and platform.

For Raul Gómez, VP of Technology at Exoticca, understanding whether that organization is working effectively has always required looking beyond engineering activity. The company manages performance through OKRs, so engineering metrics ultimately need to connect with the outcomes the business is trying to achieve.

“You can have engineering metrics that appear to be very good, but if the OKRs are not progressing, that is a clear indication that there is something else you need to understand.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

The challenge: DORA metrics were no longer enough

Before Pensero, Exoticca relied on DORA metrics alongside information from tools such as Jira and Confluence. These provided a useful view of traditional engineering workflows, including team performance and potential bottlenecks.

The arrival of generative AI changed what Exoticca needed to understand. After experimenting with AI coding tools throughout 2024 and developing a more structured approach in 2025, the team recognized both their potential and their risk.

Simply giving an engineer an AI license revealed very little about whether the tool was being used effectively or whether that investment was creating meaningful value.

“DORA metrics are great, but with the arrival of generative AI, many of the things we used to measure stopped making sense because the way we work became very different.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

Metrics such as cycle time remained relevant, but they could no longer tell the complete story. As AI accelerated code generation, more of engineering’s value shifted toward defining the right problem, designing the solution, and managing greater complexity.

Exoticca needed a way to understand not only whether work was moving faster, but how AI was being used, what it contributed to the final output, and whether that output maintained the expected level of quality.

Why Pensero: Connecting AI usage with real engineering outcomes

Exoticca wanted visibility across three fundamental questions: who was using AI, how they were using it, and what impact it was having on delivery.

That meant distinguishing between using AI for coding, analysis, problem solving, or technical definition, and then connecting that usage with speed, complexity, and quality.

This relationship was essential to proving ROI. Exoticca needed to understand whether AI allowed engineers to deliver meaningful outcomes faster, take on greater complexity, and maintain or improve quality.

Following an evaluation of its existing solution and several alternatives, Exoticca selected Pensero because it could bring all these dimensions together in one place.

“What we were looking for was visibility into AI usage, how it was being used, its impact on the final solution, and whether quality was increasing or decreasing. Until Pensero, that visibility did not exist.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

Pensero gave leadership the visibility required to make investment decisions while also giving managers and individual contributors actionable information about how their own ways of working were evolving.

From adoption metrics to meaningful AI impact

For Exoticca, the objective was not simply to know whether AI was being used. The company needed to understand whether that usage was actually changing engineering outcomes.

Pensero connects AI adoption with delivery, complexity, and quality, allowing teams to move beyond license counts, token consumption, or self-reported usage.

This makes it possible to identify situations where an engineer may be using AI frequently without seeing a corresponding improvement in delivery or quality, giving managers an opportunity to provide support before the issue becomes a broader performance problem.

The results: Value in less than a month

The initial implementation was fast. Once Exoticca connected its data and configured its teams, roles, and AI tools, useful metrics began appearing almost immediately. The team reached meaningful value in less than a month.

The timing proved especially valuable. Exoticca implemented Pensero shortly before rolling out AI tools across its entire engineering organization. As adoption increased, Pensero detected a significant productivity spike, but it also revealed that AI-assisted pull requests initially experienced a decline in quality.

Rather than discovering the issue after it had become embedded in the team’s processes, Exoticca could react during the first month and improve its internal AI onboarding.

“We saw a very significant productivity spike, but we also saw that AI assisted pull requests had lower quality. That helped us improve our onboarding and define what we should expect from AI: not only greater efficiency, but maintaining quality.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

This gave Exoticca an early and objective signal that successful AI adoption could not be measured through output alone. Increased productivity had to be paired with at least the same level of quality the team achieved before AI.

Radical transparency at every level

Today, Pensero supports three levels of the Exoticca engineering organization.

At the leadership level, Raul uses Pensero almost every day to understand what is happening across technology, review the impact of AI, and identify where deeper attention may be required. Automated reports provide a clear overview, while the underlying data allows him to explore a specific team, experiment, or initiative when necessary.

What previously took hours to prepare can now be understood in minutes.

Engineering managers use the platform to understand team performance, identify blockers, evaluate technologies, and support mentoring and coaching.

Individual contributors also have access to their own information, allowing engineers to understand which tools and models work best for them, learn from unsuccessful approaches, and take responsibility for improving their own performance.

“Transparency is extremely important to us culturally. We try to ensure that anything I can see about an individual is also visible to that person. It would not be healthy for me to have a view they could not access themselves.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

This transparency makes measurement a tool for supporting the team rather than monitoring it. As engineers navigate one of the most significant changes in their profession, Pensero gives Exoticca the evidence required to identify where people need guidance and provide that support proactively.

The results: 39% shorter cycle time and 140% greater delivery

To evaluate the results of its AI strategy, Exoticca focuses on three interconnected dimensions: speed, complexity, and quality.

Comparing the fourth quarter of 2025 with the first half of 2026, Exoticca achieved:

• 39% shorter average cycle time

• Approximately 50 hours saved per epic

• 140% greater delivery when accounting for both code volume and complexity

• A reduction in rework from 2.4% to 2.1% of engineering effort

The quality result is particularly important. Exoticca’s primary objective was not necessarily to improve quality immediately, but to ensure that faster and more complex delivery did not cause it to deteriorate.

Pensero allowed the team to prove that it was delivering substantially more while maintaining and slightly improving its previous quality levels.

AI has also enabled Exoticca to take on work that would previously have required six months and complete it in approximately three. This creates capacity to deliver goals that otherwise might have been postponed or removed from the roadmap.

“If AI has a positive impact, the next question is whether we can generate an even greater impact with additional investment. If the answer is yes, everyone will be happier.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

Managing engineering through its biggest transformation

For Exoticca, the value of Pensero goes beyond replacing one set of engineering metrics with another. It provides a way to understand a fundamentally different model of software development.

AI is not eliminating the need for engineers, but it is changing how they work. The metrics used to evaluate performance, guide investment, and support teams need to evolve at the same pace.

Without that visibility, leaders cannot make informed decisions and managers cannot help engineers adapt successfully.

“AI is going to completely change the way we work. That means the way we understand what is happening in a team, how it performs, and whether it is healthy must change as well. Without a tool that adapts this quickly, it is impossible to make good decisions and, above all, to help people through one of the most complex transformations of their careers.”

Raul Gómez · VP of Technology, Exoticca

For Exoticca, Pensero has become the measurement layer that connects AI usage with delivery, complexity, quality, and investment decisions. This gives the organization an objective way to understand whether AI is creating value and where to focus next.