Research-Driven Engineering Leadership

RDEL #122: How do daily stand-ups boost team performance?

Stand-ups don't directly improve satisfaction or performance—but they foster psychological safety, which drives both outcomes with high effect sizes.

Dec 9

2

RDEL #121: How does Github use DevEx data to improve productivity?

Combining quarterly surveys with system telemetry helped GitHub prioritize investments that improved both metrics and actual developer satisfaction.

Dec 2

November 2025

RDEL #120: What skills become most valuable when developers work with AI agents?

Developers who plan before acting accept agent code more often, revealing that abstraction and specification skills matter more than typing speed.

Nov 25

1

RDEL #119: What process inefficiencies have the biggest impact on developer satisfaction?

A study of agile-based software engineers finds process inefficiencies account for 33.8% of job satisfaction variance

Nov 18

8

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RDEL #118: How much does AI improve development speed in enterprise settings?

Google's controlled trial finds 21% speed improvement, but with high confidence intervals

Nov 11

4

1

RDEL #117: Does Giving Developers Control Over AI Improve Trust and Adoption?

Providing granular AI controls retained 72% of developers who had completely disabled code completion features

Nov 4

3

October 2025

RDEL #116: Our most popular posts on AI's impact on productivity

Research from Meta, Microsoft, and industry surveys shows where AI coding tools deliver value—and where they still have room to grow.

Oct 28 • 

Lizzie Matusov

5

RDEL #115: What are the 2025 benchmarks for the key DORA metrics?

Only 16% of teams deploy on-demand while 24% deploy less than monthly, revealing a stark divide in delivery maturity.

Oct 21

6

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RDEL #114: Where do developers actually want AI to support their work?

Developers welcome AI for toil and boilerplate but demand human oversight for high-stakes decisions and resist automation in mentoring and strategic…

Oct 14

2

RDEL #113: What are the seven team profiles of engineering delivery performance?

Seven distinct team patterns emerged from nearly 5,000 developers, each requiring fundamentally different improvement strategies

Oct 7

14

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September 2025

RDEL #112: What's AI's impact on software delivery performance? (2025 DORA Report)

AI adoption now improves throughput and authentic pride, but delivery instability persists and friction remains unchanged.

Sep 30

4

RDEL #111: How do developers collaborate with AI agents when solving real-world software engineering problems?

Developers using incremental collaboration strategies succeeded on 83% of issues, while one-shot approaches only achieved 38% success rates.

Sep 23

4

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