Jason GormanApr 1

CircleCI's analysis of 28 million CI workflows confirms the same picture the DORA data shows. While feature branch activity's up significantly, the median impact on *main* (i.e. release) branch activity's net-negative 7%.

Only the top 5% of teams saw significant gains. The top 10% flatlined at 1%.

For the average team, AI slows them down overall.

Told ya!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-28-million-workflows-reveal-ai-codings-biggest-risk-circleci-j9syc/

What 28 million workflows reveal about AI coding’s biggest risk

In our last issue, we shared a preview of data from our upcoming 2026 State of Software Delivery showing that the promised AI productivity boom isn’t all hype. Throughput across the CircleCI platform increased 59% year-over-year, by far the largest productivity jump we've ever recorded and a clear i

Show threadJason GormanApr 1
"But Jason, this is only 28 million data points comprising actual observations from real projects..."
Show threadJason GormanApr 1
Now let's watch engineering leaders nod sagely in agreement and then proceed to do nothing about it. Like they always did.
Show threadmosmann
@jasongorman "But we are the top 5% team" ..
Apr 1 at 5:06amWeb
Show threadChris PittsApr 1

@mosmann @jasongorman 👆This! 100% this!

Teams & developers generally just don’t realise how bad they are. The apparent arrogance and lack of humility is staggering, and IMO is getting worse.

Show threadJason GormanApr 1
@thirstybear @mosmann I've known for years that the teams who need my help most believe they need it the least
Show threadChris OldwoodApr 1

@jasongorman @thirstybear @mosmann

You are Nanny McPhee 😁

“When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go.”

Show threadChris PittsApr 1
@chrisoldwood @jasongorman @mosmann Funnily enough that’s how I describe my coaching approach too 🙂
Show threadmormundApr 1
@mosmann @jasongorman I would not take the mentioned "Top 5% Teams" as the actual best teams in terms of actual real world impact. It just means that the teams that pushed a lot to the main branch do it even more now. But that could just be teams with no code review dumping code into main and testing there. Including hotfixes because stuff did not work.
Show threadJason GormanApr 1
@mormund @mosmann Exactly. It means "top 5 in the data"
Show threadmosmannApr 1
@jasongorman @mormund I think we lost the "build reliable, maintainable software" KPI years ago:)
Show threadSilmathoron ⁂Apr 1
@jasongorman @mormund @mosmann given that their average CI time is 6s, I don't think we need to ponder about this for too long...
Show threadCees de GrootApr 1
@mosmann @jasongorman the first thing I thought. I know that "top 5%" is used in the article in a strictly statistical sense (as a percentile), but I fear that too many people won't realize that it's unlikely that you can know how to behave to land there - it's just a statistical outlier. So the real take-away is the median negative rate, IMHO.