Devs Are Coding Faster. Code Reviews Are Eating the Gains
CIO Dive, Friday, October 2nd, 2026
Bain finds AI coding gains are stalling at code review and verification, and urges CIOs to build quality controls into the workflow.
Bain & Co. finds that AI is speeding up code generation, but review and verification have become the new bottleneck, leaving organizations with 20-27% gains against expectations of much larger improvements.
Bain recommends giving AI tools better context about codebases, architecture and standards, and building automated testing, security checks and policy controls into AI-assisted workflows while keeping human review for the highest-value decisions.
CIOs should measure end-to-end delivery through release frequency, cycle time, defect rates and deployment success rather than code volume.