AI Might Help Speed Up Software Development, But 81% of Devs Now Spend More Time Reviewing Code
IT Pro, Friday, May 15th, 2026
AI adoption accelerates development but creates 'invisible work' burden, with 81% of developers spending more time on code reviews.
While AI tools provide productivity gains for software developers, a Harness report reveals the technology is creating significant downstream challenges, particularly in code quality validation. Approximately 81% of developers now spend more time on code reviews since AI adoption, with 28% spending 30% longer on these tasks, creating an 'invisible work' trend where roughly 31% of developer time goes untracked.
The research highlights a critical gap in how organizations measure developer productivity, with 89% of tech leaders still using metrics that don't accurately reflect AI's impact and 94% missing key considerations like tech debt and developer burnout.
Organizations are urged to overhaul their performance measurement frameworks to account for AI-generated work, treat AI performance as a separate discipline, and involve developers in defining new metrics to address growing perception gaps between management and frontline practitioners.