Case study: 25% More Productive Development Teams Through AI Skillsets
An in-person training group
What would it mean to have 25% more software development output with the same hours, tools, and people in your development team? This is the promise of AI developer tools and especially the skillsets to use them effectively as the tools are becoming more capable and complex as the same time. In this post, we take a look into the impact of specialist skillsets on the tools already in use.
The results are from the participants of 10x Developer, a one-day training focused on delivering specialist skillsets on the latest AI developer tools. Most of the participants have already been using such tools, so the impact comes mainly from the skillsets gained during the training.
The Key Result: 25% More Done, Every Day
Developers who participated in the training reported savings of, on average, one hour per day. Coding-focused hours typically make up around four hours of the workday, this translates to a 25% boost in productivity. For teams, this means more tasks completed and higher-quality outcomes—all within the same timeframe.
However, it gets even more interesting: studies regularly show that, in larger companies, developers often spend closer to 1 hour per day of actual banging of the keyboard. In such cases, 1 extra hour would result in a 100% increase in productivity. In reality, in a significant part of the cases, one hour of AI-assisted coding can save multiple days of work.
Not Just Junior Developers
While junior developers definitely benefit from learning how to effectively use AI tools, senior developers and team leads often gain even more, even though you would think the opposite. These people frequently find themselves spending even less time coding and more time managing people, teams, and tasks or tackling high-level challenges. As teams become more independent through the use of AI developer tools, senior developers can refocus on critical tasks. For them, the addition of one extra hour of work per day becomes even more impactful, amplifying their ability to deliver and enabling the entire team to operate more efficiently.
Improvements in Quality of Life
It is not all about productivity though. All participants also reported improvements in general life and work quality after the training. As the veil of uncertainty and "magic" was lifted, developers found themselves more confident & empowered to leverage AI tools where needed. This leads to feelings of more satisfying and less burdened development work as the droning parts can be "outsourced" to the AI developer tools, keeping the developer focused on higher-level problem-solving. These changes are also reflected in the universal endorsement of the training for others in their organizations.
Unlocking the 25% Productivity Boost
To unlock the productivity boost, teams need to adopt the latest AI tools and seamlessly integrate them into their workflows. Success however hinges on understanding how these tools interact with AI models and tailoring workflows to fully support their needs.
Checklist for Success:
✅ Use the Latest Tools: Ensure your team is equipped with cutting-edge tools, such as Cursor.
✅ Understand How Tools Work: Learn how these tools function together with the underlying AI models to be able to optimize their capabilities.
✅ Adapt Your Workflow: Restructure your workflows to help the AI tools produce high-quality results.
It is also good to remember that the 25% increase in question is only from the skillsets for existing tools.. The effect is much more pronounced if you are going from zero AI tools to the latest & greatest tools with the specialist skillsets to use them.
The Bottom Line
One extra hour of productive work per day is a significant boost in productivity. What's more, it is easily attainable through skillsets and it compounds over weeks, months, and years to create substantial gains and competitive advantage. Especially when actual development time is limited.
Here’s the bottom line: Just by giving your software developers the specialist skillsets for the tools you can achieve a tangible competitive advantage of a more productive development team that is also happier. It will even give the leadership more time to focus on bigger impact tasks instead of constantly fighting to find high-quality recruits to increase productivity. If you are not investing in the skills of your team, you are leaving valuable time and money on the table.
If you want more help on the specialist skillsets, consider 10x Developer Training and see if you are a good candidate for the 10x Developer Training. It has a proven track record of delivering value in just one focused day of training.
