The recent DORA 2025 State of AI-Assisted Software Development report suggests that, today, only a small minority of the industry are likely to benefit from AI-assisted coding – and more importantly, avoid doing themselves harm.

The report groups teams into seven clusters to show how AI-assisted coding is shaping delivery. Only two – 6 (“Pragmatic performers”) and 7 (“Harmonious high-achievers”) – are currently benefitting.

They’re increasing throughput without harming stability – without an increase in change failure rate (CFR) i.e. they’re not seeing significantly more production bugs, which would otherwise hurt customers and create additional (re)work.

For the other clusters, AI mostly amplifies existing problems. Cluster 5 (Stable and methodical) will only benefit if they change how they work. Clusters 1–4 (the majority of the industry) are likely to see more harm than good – any gains in delivery speed are largely cancelled out by a rise in the change failure rate (CFR), as the report explains.

The report shows 40% of survey respondents fall into clusters 6 and 7. Big caveat though: DORA’s data comes from teams already familiar with DORA and modern practices (even if not applying them fully). Across the wider industry, the real proportion is likely *half that or less*.

That means around three-quarters of the industry are not yet in a position to realistically benefit from AI-assisted coding.

For leaders, it’s less about whether to adopt AI-assisted coding, and more about whether your ways of working are good enough to turn it into an asset, rather than a liability.