1、The State of AI-Powered Software DevelopmentOrganizations Need Governance to Unlock AIs True PotentialContentsExecutive summary .1Key findings .2AI coding assistant adoption drives major productivity gains .3Governance is the key to increased AI ROI .7The future of AI-powered development hinges on s
2、ecurity .10Conclusion:AI impact scales with discipline and governance .13Methodology and demographics .14About Black Duck .15About UserEvidence |1Executive summaryAI adoption alone no longer creates a competitive advantage.Instead,this edge increasingly comes from how development teams operationaliz
3、e AI.Many teams report extensive use of AI coding assistants,resulting in notable improvements in velocity and productivity.Yet a lack of governance and limited visibility lead to an array of bottlenecks further down the software development and review process that largely negate these efficiency ga
4、ins.Currently,AI simply redistributes development work rather than eliminating it altogether.The next phase of AI maturity must therefore focus on scaling,managing,and auditing AI-assisted code.In this report,we explore how organizations can benefit from more deliberate implementation of critical pr
5、ocesses,effective governance,and specialized tooling.Together,these efforts transform pipelines into the greatest force multiplier for a business,building on the efficiency-based foundation that AI coding assistants have established.We partnered with third-party research firm UserEvidence to conduct
6、 an independent market survey of 831 software engineers and development and operations(DevOps)professionals in March 2026.The research sample was vendor-neutral,but neither Black Duck nor UserEvidence customers were excluded from |2Key findingsAI provides major efficiency gains and a full day back p