Frictionless
In the age of AI, the organizations that win will be those that relentlessly pinpoint and eliminate developer friction.
Frictionless makes the business case and the human case for reducing friction as a strategic investment.
An encyclopedic resource for anyone at any stage of their DevEx transformation journey.
Frictionless is the book I wish I'd had when I was previously leading this in an organization.
Frictionless provides an essential lens on how to outship your competition in the Age of AI.
About the book
AI can generate code in minutes—so why does shipping software still take forever?
The answer is friction: The invisible barriers that turn quick wins into endless delays. While your competitors ship daily updates, your developers burn out fighting broken tools instead of solving real problems.
In Frictionless, developer experience experts Nicole Forsgren and Abi Noda reveal why eliminating friction isn't just about developer happiness—it's about business survival. Drawing from research with hundreds of software teams, they provide a complete 7-step methodology to identify bottlenecks, measure impact, and systematically remove barriers that slow innovation.
Whether your teams use AI coding assistants or established workflows, this book shows you how to unlock your engineering organization's full potential. You'll discover why companies like LinkedIn froze feature development to eliminate friction—and transformed their business as a result.
Stop letting friction kill your competitive advantage. Start building software at the speed your business demands.
Nicole Forsgren
Nicole Forsgren is an expert in DevEx, DevOps, and decision making, and is the Lead author of the Shingo Publication Award-winning book Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps.
Her work on technical practices and development has been published in industry and academic journals and is used to guide organizational transformations around the world.
Abi Noda
Abi Noda is the Co-Founder and CEO of DX, where he leads the company strategic direction and R&D efforts. His work focuses on helping leaders measure and improve developer experience.
Before joining DX, Noda held engineering leadership roles at several companies and was the Founder and CEO of Pull Panda, which was acquired by Github in 2019.
Reviews
Tools matter, but people make software. Frictionless reminds us that productivity isn’t a measure of how fast we type (I type slow!), but how well we remove the things that make us stop.
Every technology leader talks about productivity, but few know how to drive it systematically. Frictionless offers a clear, research-backed blueprint for doing exactly that.
Frictionless makes the business case and the human case for reducing friction as a strategic investment.
Noda and Forsgren distill years of research and real-world practice into a framework every technology leader can act on. It’s the new playbook for building happier, faster, more effective engineering teams.
Frictionless finally gives language and structure to what great engineering leaders have always felt: that developer experience is the heart of productivity. This book will reshape how organizations think about enabling their engineers.
This isn’t just another book about developer productivity—it’s a manifesto for how modern software organizations should operate. Insightful, data-driven, and immediately applicable.
Frictionless is a comprehensive, practical reference for implementing a developer experience practice at your organization. It is the book I wish I d had when I was leading this role. Based on a wealth of experience at the cutting edge of this field, this book is an essential guide for leaders and practitioners who want to achieve breakthrough, lasting improvements in engineering productivity and team health.
Frictionless is an essential guide for engineering leaders who recognize that developer experience isn't just about happier engineers, it's the cornerstone of competitive advantage and organizational efficiency.
If there’s one thing I learned over my career, it’s to find people that truly get the space, and listen to them. Abi and Nicole have once again proved that they truly get this space.
If you're still treating developer experience as nice-to-have, this book will change your mind. Nicole and Abi show how investing in developer experience drives measurable business impact and developer satisfaction.
Reading Frictionless feels like discovering the missing operating system for engineering culture. It connects the dots between metrics, experience, and outcomes with clarity and evidence.
Frictionless provides an essential lens on how to outship your competition in the Age of AI.
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