The Delivery Drag Index
A diagnostic benchmark for delivery bottlenecks in scaling teams navigating AI-accelerated development.
Teams blame low velocity on people. Usually it's process. We built a benchmark to diagnose where.
Take the survey
9 questions, ~60 seconds. 100% anonymous (email optional for benchmark report).
Get Your ScorePreliminary Findings (Cycle 1)
Based on n=14 valid responses as of February 2026:
- 71% of teams report Review Drag (average PR cycle time >24 hours)
- 86% report losing 3+ hours per week per engineer to waiting (CI, builds, reviews, approvals)
- Average DDI score: 47.9/100
- Mid-size teams (11-50 devs) show highest average drag: 72.5 points
- Small teams (1-10 devs) show lowest: 28.8 points
- Most common bottleneck: validation layer (code creation fast, review/merge slow)
What This Means
The AI era shifted the constraint from writing code to reviewing it. Throughput increased at the creation layer, but validation became the bottleneck. Teams can generate code faster than they can verify, integrate, and deploy it.
This matches broader industry observations, including discussions with engineering infrastructure leadership about validation layer constraints in AI-accelerated development environments. Repository sprawl without headcount growth, greenfield projects moving faster than brownfield, and validation infrastructure struggling to keep pace with AI-generated throughput.
Review Drag affects 71% of teams in this preliminary sample. The constraint has moved downstream—from "can we build it?" to "can we safely ship it?"
Methodology
The DDI uses a 9-question survey measuring five drag categories (Decision, Review, Infrastructure, Release, Debt) and three operational metrics (Lost Time, Unblock Speed, Iteration Confidence).
Score range: 0-100 points (higher = more drag)
Team cohorts: Segmented by size (1-10, 11-50, 51-150, 150+ devs)
Data quality: Manual review, test entries excluded, anonymized aggregates only
If your score confirms this reality—or you're already experiencing these bottlenecks— a Delivery Pressure Review can identify where your constraints are and what to fix first.