I came back from a trip over this weekend. My experience was good for the most part, but it is probably due to a few things. The first flight this past Saturday was RDU-IAD on an ERJ-145. I was group 2, and the GA did a good job of making sure people boarded by correct group number. This was not a big plane, so the issue of not enough space did not really apply. The problem was landing a few minutes late and waiting 15 minutes for someone to bring the stairs to get off the RJ. Because of that, I was one of the last to board my IAD-LAX flight. I did not get to see the huge mess of boarding at IAD.
On the return flights, I was upgraded on LAX-SFO which was a 737-900. I had group 1, and the GA did the preboarding for GS and gave enough time for GS to board. The guy in front of me in group 1 had a long Eastern European name which caused a small delay when the computer system did not recognize his name. Other than that, it seemed like everything was fine.
I did not get upgraded on SFO-RDU, and I was in group 2 for this flight on a 737-800. This flight boarded from gate 77b, and the flight was not full (lots of empty middle seats in the front of economy - only 18 E+ seats on the plane). I had a whole exit row to myself. The GA for this flight gave even more time for preboarding GS. I had a good feeling that she would not let boarding a full 757-300 turn into a zoo.
I was glad to see that the GAs in LAX and SFO were giving each group enough time to board and checking group numbers. I think they are trying to make it work.