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.

–Kent Beck
Creator of Extreme Development and author of Test Driven Development

An encyclopedic resource for anyone at any stage of their DevEx transformation journey.

–Camille Fournier
VP of Engineering, CoreWeave

Frictionless is the book I wish I'd had when I was previously leading this in an organization.

–Jez Humble
SRE at Google Cloud and co-author of Continuous Delivery

Frictionless provides an essential lens on how to outship your competition in the Age of AI.

–Sarah Drasner
Sr. Director, Core Google Infrastructure

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.

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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.

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