> Planning, alignment, scoping, code review, and handoffs—the human parts of the SDLC—remain largely untouched
Seems likely that process is holding things back. Planning has always been a "best-guess". There's lots you can't account for until you start a task.
Code review mostly exists because the cost of doing something wrong was high (because human coding is slow). If you can code faster, you can replace bad code faster. I.e., LLMs have cheapened the cost of deployment.
We can't honestly assess the new way of doing things when we bring along the baggage of the old way of doing things.
Fair assessment. And worth noting that in a sane world, a broad 10% productivity improvement across industry would be a once-in-a-lifetime, headline-making story, not a disappointment.
Yeah, listen... I'm glad these types of studies are being conducted. I'll say this though: the difference between pre- and post-Opus 4.5 has been night and day for me.
From August 2025 through November 2025 I led a complex project at work where I used Sonnet 4.5 heavily. It was very helpful, but my total productivity gains were around 10-15%, which is pretty much what the study found. Once Opus came out in November though, it was like someone flipped a switch. It was much more capable at autonomous work and required way less hand-holding, intervention or course-correction. 4.6 has been even better.
So I'm much more interested in reading studies like this over the next two years where the start period coincides with Opus 4.5's release.
> Planning, alignment, scoping, code review, and handoffs—the human parts of the SDLC—remain largely untouched
Seems likely that process is holding things back. Planning has always been a "best-guess". There's lots you can't account for until you start a task.
Code review mostly exists because the cost of doing something wrong was high (because human coding is slow). If you can code faster, you can replace bad code faster. I.e., LLMs have cheapened the cost of deployment.
We can't honestly assess the new way of doing things when we bring along the baggage of the old way of doing things.
Fair assessment. And worth noting that in a sane world, a broad 10% productivity improvement across industry would be a once-in-a-lifetime, headline-making story, not a disappointment.
because the human may be the bottleneck soon
>> November 2024 through February 2026
Yeah, listen... I'm glad these types of studies are being conducted. I'll say this though: the difference between pre- and post-Opus 4.5 has been night and day for me.
From August 2025 through November 2025 I led a complex project at work where I used Sonnet 4.5 heavily. It was very helpful, but my total productivity gains were around 10-15%, which is pretty much what the study found. Once Opus came out in November though, it was like someone flipped a switch. It was much more capable at autonomous work and required way less hand-holding, intervention or course-correction. 4.6 has been even better.
So I'm much more interested in reading studies like this over the next two years where the start period coincides with Opus 4.5's release.
so far, we're still learning how to use this new tool, which is also getting better with each release
I agree, it was about 10.29% earlier this year, now we are standing at least at 10.35% or something.
The last one that made the rounds was negative, so we have moved more than 10% in less than 1/2 a year