DORA on GenAI
DORA has a positively framed, but damning, opinion on the state of GenAI in software engineering
DORA is taken as a bit of an authority on all things DevOps and dev engineering, including aspects such as development and delivery velocity. So why are we ignoring their recent report on the impact of GenAI?
For a 25% increase in the adoption of GenAi for software engineering DORA reports a
- 2.1% increase in productivity
- 2.6% drop in time doing valuable work
- 1.8% increase in code complexity
- 0.8% increase in tech debt
- 1.5% decrease in delivery throughput
- 7.2% decrease in delivery stability
While the authors of the report frame this fairly positively, to me this is a pretty damning insight into the real impact of GenAI. At best you could say its insignificant, at worst it’s negative.
Take out the vibe coding influencers, the VCs scared of losing their shirt and Sam Altman’s fan club and what are we really left with?
Within HMx Labs I think our experience with GenAI has probably been a bit more positive than this and I’m not an AI doomer by any means. I just wish we could be done with the hype already.
I’m not denying the impact of things like Loveable and the ability for non developers to create things they wouldn’t have been able to in the past. I guess that’s kinda great.
But have what real value have we seen in exchange for accelerating the heat death of the universe and ignoring investment in anything that doesn’t have AI in the title.
So, to the real software developers out there, what impact are you actually seeing?
