Friction Smells: Signs Your Team Can Move Faster
The tell-tale signals that friction, not capability, is capping your team's speed
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 87%
A diagnostic checklist of observable 'smells' that indicate a team has substantial room to move faster because of friction rather than lack of ability. It answers the founder's recurring question of whether the team could be faster, while cautioning that speed has diminishing returns and speed without strategy just ships trash faster. Use it to spot low-hanging DevX fruit.
Origin
Forsgren's response to 'how do I know if my team is moving fast enough,' where she asserts 'most teams can move faster' and lists the concrete smells she looks for, including an org-switching cost as high as a new-hire onboarding tax.
Core principles
- 01Most teams can move faster — but not all speed gains are good, and returns diminish
- 02Speed without strategy just ships trash faster; strategy is the core piece
- 03High switching cost between projects or orgs is a strong friction signal
- 04Listen for what people complain about repeatedly — the recurring gripe is the smell
How to run it
- 1
Listen for chronic build and test pain
Watch for constantly breaking builds, flaky tests (false positives), and overly long processes being mentioned again and again.
- 2
Check provisioning and environment friction
Note if requesting a new system or provisioning a new environment is painful — a sign of systemic friction.
- 3
Test the cost of switching tasks or orgs
See whether it's really hard to switch tasks or projects. If someone won't move to another part of the org for unclear, non-political reasons, friction is likely the cause.
Pro tip Once developers finally get their system working, switching costs are so high they stay put.
- 4
Measure the internal-transfer tax
Ask whether moving between orgs inside the company costs nearly as much ramp-up as hiring someone new.
Watch out Some companies made internal transfers 'pay the same tax as a new hire' because systems were so different and full of friction.
- 5
Sanity-check against strategy
Before pushing for raw speed, confirm you're making the right business decisions — faster shipping of the wrong thing is worthless.
Pro tip This is where PMs come in: strategy decides what to ship, experiment, and roll out.
Watch out Garbage in, garbage out — speeding up a bad strategy just produces garbage faster.
In the wild
Forsgren worked with companies where switching orgs within the same company forced a developer to pay essentially the same ramp-up tax as a brand-new hire, because the systems were so different and so full of friction.
→ The prohibitive switching cost revealed deep systemic friction worth fixing.
Common mistakes
Chasing speed past the point of returns
Given cognitive load, not all speed gains are good; beyond a certain point upside is limited — though most teams are nowhere near that point.
Optimizing speed without strategy
You can ship trash faster every single day; without smart decisions about what to ship, faster delivery just multiplies waste.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and eng leaders trying to judge whether their team has untapped speed
Not ideal for
High-maturity teams already near their friction ceiling with strong strategy in place
From the transcript
“Most teams can move faster”
“if you're always hearing about bills breaking, flaky tests, uh, overly long processes”
“you had to basically pay the same tax as a new hire because the systems were so different”
“We can ship trash faster every single day. We need strategy and really smart decisions to know what to ship”
From the episode
How to measure AI developer productivity in 2025
Nicole Forsgren