United StatesTechnology and telecom2024 – ongoing

IBM

watsonx Code Assistant used by IBM's own software teams

IBM project teams cut code documentation time by 59% on average with an AI code assistant

WorkingVendor case studyVendor ↗

Problem

IBM software teams spent long hours reading, documenting and testing code. One team inherited more than 50 undocumented code repositories with about 750 JavaScript files.

Approach

IBM ran an internal watsonx challenge in 2024 in which project teams used watsonx Code Assistant for code explanation, documentation, code generation and test case generation. The assistant worked through an integrated chat. Teams reported their own time savings.

Results

59%average cut in code documentation time across 153 teams, self-reported, per IBMVendor case study[1]

56%average cut in code explanation time across 107 teams, self-reported, per IBMVendor case study[1]

38%average cut in code generation time across 112 teams, self-reported, per IBMVendor case study[1]

Takeaway

Savings differed by task. Explaining and documenting code saved more time than generating code or tests. The results are self-reported by the teams.

Sources

IBM Software Team
IBM17 Oct 2024Vendor publication

Source summaries

[1]IBM17 Oct 2024

IBM describes an internal challenge where software teams used watsonx Code Assistant on their own projects. It gives average time savings by task: 56% for code explanation, 59% for documentation, 38% for code generation and 38% for test generation. It says the team-level results were self-reported.

Full details are in the original sources.

Added 4 Nov 2026 · Updated 4 Nov 2026