Mob Progamming:  You will be exposed

Andy Warhol – Exposing Himself (Using a Polaroid. Remember those?)

Perhaps the title of this post is a bit misleading.  It should probaby be titled, “Mob Progamming:  You will be exposed”.  That’s exactly what happens to members on a Mob Programming team.  The interesting part is that it isn’t all that bad and if you are working on a real team it is beneficial.

If you are part of a team that is practicing Mob Programming, every aspect of your interaction with the team will be exposed and on display.  Everything from personal hygiene to technical expertise.  When you get stuck on a problem and use Google to search, the team will see exactly how you think when coming up with search terms.  There is no where to hide, but is there really any reason to hide?

Continue reading ‘Mob Programming Exposed’ »

Several people have asked about how we chose the name “Mob Programming” for our practice.

Here is my memory of it:

It seems we naturally give names to anything nameable

Once we started working using this practice, we found ourselves wanting to call it something.  We started calling it different things:  Crowd programming, Pair ++,  Team Programming, Teaming, Mobbing, and Mob Programming are the ones I remember.  I imagine there were others.

Continue reading ‘Mob Programming – where did you get the name?’ »

A week ago I did a Coding Dojo demonstration with Llewellyn Falco at a conference, and showed the Mob Programming video.  One of the audience members sent me an email to ask a few questions about what we’ve been doing, and I responded with my answers.  It seems that others might be wondering about the same things, so here they are:

Question: Thinking in a group setting doesn’t seem productive or even possible.  I assume that when you are stuck on a design some people may go to their cubicles to ponder it. Is this correct?

Answer:  We pretty much work and think all day, every day, in a group setting.  However, every team member is free work alone, take a walk… whatever it takes.

Continue reading ‘Answering a few questions’ »

Some info about our Mob Programming Approach

Basic Mob Work Area

Most of our work is done sitting together in the group work area. We try to make it as comfortable as possible. There is plenty of room and we can easily have others join us whenever needed.

Our work area is configured out of some standard cubicle walls, and is about 16ft x 18ft. It works pretty nicely, although earlier we worked in a separate room for a while and found that to be even better.

Continue reading ‘Mob Programming Basics’ »

Mob Programming is a hand above the rest

Mob Programming may seem to be counter intuitive at first, however it quickly becomes evident that the ability to transfer knowledge to your whole team at the same time quickly outweighs the perceived loss in efficiency that you would normally otherwise think would result in a period of time all of your developers are sitting at one keyboard.

Analogy

Imagine programming as a large puzzle that someone must assemble, some pieces are lost under the bed and some are at your neighbors house from the last time you got together to assemble a puzzle. The puzzle pieces represent the individual bits of information you would need to actually write the code. The finished puzzle being the written and complete code. Now picture having your friends with you to help you with the puzzle. Each person found all the pieces before hand or at least know where to look for a specific piece. The act of assembling the puzzle is much like the typing of the code, it does not take a lot of time and once it is complete everyone can agree that it looks good and move on. Completing the puzzle is much faster and this is why:

Example

If 5 people work on 5 separate puzzles at the same time and each have to spend time looking for the pieces they will collectively spend that much time performing the act of looking instead of assembling. Conversely if 5 people work on 5 puzzles together they will find the correct pieces and assemble them with little to no time spent looking.

The Path

Mob Programming is an obvious path to take using this example. The technical minded often get stuck on minor things because they have to find out how to accomplish a goal. With 5 programmers looking at how to solve a problem, the answers to that problem come into focus without any wasted time. 5 programmers working together can complete work faster than 5 working apart or even in pairs.

Thanks for Reading!

In our experiences in the mob we work in, this has been extremely evident especially in regard to domain knowledge,  technical knowledge  and platforms used for development and business practices. The pieces are all over and each person has a piece.

Mob Programming is the latest thing.  All the kids are talking about it.

Resistance is futile.  Or at least somewhat discouraged.  Well, if you want to resist, that’s okay.

Remember: A team is not a team if you can’t smell each other.

Agile Tip: A 15 minute meeting every morning is not teamwork, it’s a carpool.