I haven’t written a book review for quite a while. Since I set a yearly goal to start doing it again, here is my first one: Frictionless: 7 Steps to Remove Barriers, Unlock Value, and Outpace Your Competition in the AI Era.
The authors are highly relevant contributors to the field they are writing about. Nicole Forsgren was a main author of Accelerate and played a key role in creating the DORA and SPACE productivity frameworks. The other author, Abi Noda, worked on the DevEx framework.
First of all, I liked the book.
Second, I think the subtitle is a bit catchy — but fair enough. The presence of the word AI shows that the authors did think about it, which is of course essential for a contemporary book like this. That said, the content itself is largely AI-agnostic, in my opinion. And honestly, that’s a good thing.
Frictionless… What is friction after all?
There is no better definition than the one given by the authors:
It is “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”
Oh, we all know these. We have all experienced these problems, no matter where we work.
Oh we all know these, we all experienced these problems no matter where we work.
So, is this book for all of us?
Probably not. If you’re a developer who “just” wants to work in peace, you will likely find better investments of your time.
But if you’re someone who likes to be involved in improving developer experience — or even if you just find yourself repeatedly trying to convince management why they should grant time for bigger refactorings — this book is worth reading.
I don’t think it contains revolutionary ideas, but it is extremely practical, just as the subtitle hints. (And yes, I think we need more practical than revolutionary, actionable ideas.)
From the book, you’ll get concrete guidance on:
- how to make a business case by translating DevEx improvements into a language the business cares about (yes, that essentially means money)
- how to identify the DevEx improvements that really matter
- how to build a sustainable DevEx improvement strategy
If these topics interest you, Frictionless is a must-read. But to be fair, even if you’re an engineer regularly cursing “the business” because you can’t sell seemingly small improvements or refactorings — and you’re not particularly interested in the broader DevEx picture — it is still worth reading this book. It can help you learn how to translate engineering concerns into business cases.
Frictionless is a practical book for anyone operating at the frontier of engineering and business. And that represents more of us than we’d probably like to admit.
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