so far, we're still learning how to use this new tool, which is also getting better with each release

because the human may be the bottleneck soon

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.

>> 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.

> 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.