Studies: AI agents write more code but do not speed up delivery

Oct 9, 2026 · Issue 10 · 6 sources, 6 articles

A Harvard study found that AI coding agents write 30 percent more code but do not resolve more issues. A study covering 700,000 developers at 718 software companies found no increase in development speed or efficiency, and no significant improvement in Jira data.

Who is affected and how

CTO

Code volume is not a productivity metric, so the return on AI adoption should be measured by delivery and defect metrics.

tech lead

Team metrics should include closed issues and delivery time, not lines of code.

senior developer

The extra code also has to be reviewed, so the review burden may grow.

Narrative: More code, but not more delivered software

Sources

• AI Coding Agents Lift Code Output, but Jira Gains Lack Significancetokenpost · Oct 9, 2026
• AI Coding Agents Lift Code Output, but Jira Gains Lack Significance | TokenPosttokenpost.com · Oct 9, 2026
• AI Coding Agents Write 30% More Code – and Resolve Zero Additional Issues, Harvard Study Findsforkast news · Oct 11, 2026
• Harvard study finds AI coding agents boost code output but not issue resolutionaiunderstanding.org · Oct 11, 2026
• Revealed: using artificial intelligence does not increase development speed or efficiency at allprog.hu · Oct 10, 2026 · magyar
• AI code generators write more code, but don't speed up software developmentaiforradalom.hu · Oct 10, 2026 · magyar

Machine-generated summary based on the titles and excerpts of the source articles. The facts come from the linked article.