2025 DORA AI-assisted software development report (cloud.google.com)

The DORA team released its inaugural "State of AI-Assisted Software Development" report, reframing AI adoption as a systems and capability challenge rather than just a tool choice. Drawing on a decade of research into high-performing tech organizations, the report introduces the DORA AI Capabilities Model — seven foundational practices empirically shown to amplify AI’s positive impact on organizational performance — and offers a practical benchmarking framework to assess where teams stand. For practitioners and ML/AI teams the report’s biggest takeaway is that local productivity gains from AI can produce harmful downstream effects unless organizational flows and practices change. DORA maps seven distinct team profiles (from “harmonious high-achievers” to “legacy bottleneck” teams) to targeted improvement pathways, and highlights Value Stream Management (VSM) as a force multiplier that turns developer-level AI boosts into measurable product outcomes. The guidance is actionable: identify your team profile, adopt the capability practices in the model, and apply VSM to avoid integration, quality, and delivery regressions. The report is essential reading for engineering leaders, MLops practitioners, and tool builders who want to scale AI-assisted development safely and measurably.