Agile Book Club: Zero Friction Development

“When you’re ready to code, nothing gets in your way.” That’s the goal of zero-friction development, and the subject of this week’s book club session.

Reading:
📖 Zero Friction

🎙 Discussion prompts:

  • Fast feedback is at the heart of zero-friction development. Ideally, for every change, you’ll get feedback on whether that change worked or not in less than a second. What are your techniques for achieving fast feedback, and how does it change the way you work?

  • Builds are a common source of developer friction. What kinds of problems have you experienced with inconsistent or unreliable builds? How have you fixed them? Do you use tools such as Nix, Bazel, or Docker to improve your build experience?

  • Test data is another common source of build problems. What do you do to manage your test data, particularly for manual testing and end-to-end testing?

  • Automation is key to reducing development friction, but it’s easier said than done when you’re automating an existing codebase. What automation challenges have you encountered or solved?

About the Book Club

From October 2021 to August 2022, I hosted a call-in talk show based on the second edition of The Art of Agile Development. The series used the book as a jumping-off point for wide-ranging discussions about Agile ideas and practices, and had a star-studded guest list.

For an archive of past sessions, visit the book club index. For more about the book, visit the Art of Agile Development home page.

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