How AI Changes DevOps Performance: A Mechanism-Based Simulation

Abstract

Context. AI tools for software development have progressed from code completion to autonomous agents, yet evidence on their effects on DORA performance is mixed, mostly cross-sectional, and often conflates AI-generated code (AGC) with agentic AI (AGT). Objective. We examine how AGC and AGT, separately and jointly, affect deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, recovery time, and deployment rework rate. Method. We audit the evidence, formalise a two-construct model with four capability moderators, and implement a discrete-event simulation of a delivery pipeline. Six experiments include a factorial design, Shapley decompositions, sensitivity analysis over 600 parameter draws, a fixed-demand robustness test, and a staggered-adoption panel of 5,000 simulated teams with counterfactuals. Results. AGC increased failure rate, rework, and recovery time in both capability profiles. When AI increased change volume, AGC shortened lead time only where review capacity was spare (-13%) and lengthened it once review saturated; in the low-capability team, its deployment-frequency gain came entirely from unplanned rework. AGT improved deployment frequency (+31% to +34%), lead time (-8% to -22%), and recovery time (-29% to -38%), but its stability effect depended on autonomous CI repair masking defects, and escaped defects increased in the high-capability team. Capability reduced AGC's absolute failure-rate penalty (7.9 vs. 1.5 points) but not its relative penalty (+34% vs. +84%). Two-way fixed effects underestimated adoption effects by 8-16%; detecting the modelled stability effect required about 50 teams, and its capability moderation about 400. Conclusions. Within the model, DORA metrics respond to AI through queueing, batching, and oversight, not only code quality. We derive measurement rules, guardrails for agentic remediation, and a sample-size-informed field-validation protocol.