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Fri 2 May 2025 17:00 - 17:15 at 212 - AI for Process Chair(s): Keheliya Gallaba

How much does AI assistance impact developer productivity? To date, the software engineering literature has provided a range of answers, targeting a diversity of outcomes: from perceived productivity to speed on task and developer throughput. Our randomized controlled trial with 96 full-time Google software engineers contributes to this literature by sharing an estimate of the impact of three AI features on the time developers spent on a complex, enterprise-grade task. We found that AI significantly shortened the time developers spent on task. Our best estimate of the size of this effect, controlling for factors known to influence developer time on task, stands at about 21%, although our confidence interval is large. We also found an interesting effect whereby developers who spend more hours on code-related activities per day were faster with AI. Product and future research considerations are discussed. In particular, we invite further research that explores the impact of AI at the ecosystem level and across multiple suites of AI-enhanced tools, since we cannot assume that the effect size obtained in our lab study will necessarily apply more broadly, or that the effect of AI found using internal Google tooling in the summer of 2024 will translate across tools and over time.

Fri 2 May

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

16:00 - 17:30
AI for ProcessSE In Practice (SEIP) / Demonstrations / New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER) at 212
Chair(s): Keheliya Gallaba Centre for Software Excellence, Huawei Canada
16:00
15m
Talk
OptCD: Optimizing Continuous Development
Demonstrations
Talank Baral George Mason University, Emirhan Oğul Middle East Technical University, Shanto Rahman The University of Texas at Austin, August Shi The University of Texas at Austin, Wing Lam George Mason University
16:15
15m
Talk
LLMs as Evaluators: A Novel Approach to Commit Message Quality Assessment
New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER)
Abhishek Kumar Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Sandhya Sankar Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Sonia Haiduc Florida State University, Partha Pratim Das Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Partha Pratim Chakrabarti Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
16:30
15m
Talk
Towards Realistic Evaluation of Commit Message Generation by Matching Online and Offline Settings
SE In Practice (SEIP)
Petr Tsvetkov JetBrains Research, Aleksandra Eliseeva JetBrains Research, Danny Dig University of Colorado Boulder, JetBrains Research, Alexander Bezzubov JetBrains, Yaroslav Golubev JetBrains Research, Timofey Bryksin JetBrains Research, Yaroslav Zharov JetBrains Research
Pre-print
16:45
15m
Talk
Enhancing Differential Testing: LLM-Powered Automation in Release Engineering
SE In Practice (SEIP)
Ajay Krishna Vajjala George Mason University, Arun Krishna Vajjala George Mason University, Carmen Badea Microsoft Research, Christian Bird Microsoft Research, Robert DeLine Microsoft Research, Jason Entenmann Microsoft Research, Nicole Forsgren Microsoft Research, Aliaksandr Hramadski Microsoft, Sandeepan Sanyal Microsoft, Oleg Surmachev Microsoft, Thomas Zimmermann University of California, Irvine, Haris Mohammad Microsoft, Jade D'Souza Microsoft, Mikhail Demyanyuk Microsoft
17:00
15m
Talk
How much does AI impact development speed? An enterprise-based randomized controlled trial
SE In Practice (SEIP)
Elise Paradis Google, Inc, Kate Grey Google, Quinn Madison Google, Daye Nam Google, Andrew Macvean Google, Inc., Nan Zhang Google, Ben Ferrari-Church Google, Satish Chandra Google, Inc
17:15
15m
Talk
Using Reinforcement Learning to Sustain the Performance of Version Control Repositories
New Ideas and Emerging Results (NIER)
Shane McIntosh University of Waterloo, Luca Milanesio GerritForge Inc., Antonio Barone GerritForge Inc., Jacek Centkowski GerritForge Inc., Marcin Czech GerritForge Inc., Fabio Ponciroli GerritForge Inc.
Pre-print
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