Frictionless: why great developer experience can help teams win in the ‘AI age’

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Begin researching developer productivity, and you’re likely to soon encounter the work of Nicole Forsgren, as lead author of the best-selling book Accelerate, and creator of the widely-adopted DORA and SPACE developer productivity frameworks. And, beyond SPACE is the DevEx framework for productivity measurement, created by Abi Noda in collaboration with Nicole.

When I heard that the pair’s work together has continued in a new book about developer experience, I wanted to know more, and had the chance to sit down for a conversation about this big project of theirs.

Frictionless was released two weeks ago, and Nicole and Noda have been nice enough to share an excerpt from their new title with readers of the Pragmatic Engineer, below.

The back cover of Frictionless reads:

“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”.

Personally, the lack of impact by AI coding tools to date upon the speed of development and quality of software, is amusing to me. If I take the apps I use, websites I visit, and services I access via software, I don’t see signs of faster iteration, higher quality, and fewer bugs since AI started shaking up the tech industry. An exception might be AI labs that release new features at eye-catching speed, often faster than much nimbler startups, but it could be argued those begin as experimental features.

What I like about Frictionless is that it gives a step-by-step approach for developers to smooth their own workflows and be more productive. If it helps teams and companies to move faster and produce more and better software – this is a win for everyone!

This article begins with our conversation, followed by two excerpts from the new book. We cover:

1. How Frictionless relates to Accelerate, DORA, and SPACE. An obvious question, but I had to ask.

2. Writing process. Frictionless took more than 3 years to write – including a