Duly Noted

The bulk of this book is how to develop a program to find these friction points, figuring out which bits are causing the most trouble - and fixing them.

I think this is one of the best truisms of being an engineering manager. I can’t help engineers code faster. But I can distract the noise.

Another metaphor I’ve hears it the gardening metaphor. No plants ever grew faster when yelled at. But with plenty of sunshine and nutrients and some weed pulling you’ll have a bounty.

_{Quote Citation: Martin Fowler, “My Foreword to “Frictionless””, 18 November 2025, https://martinfowler.com/articles/frictionless-foreword.html}