Mob Programming: Find fun faster

Abstract

The Mob Programming technique proves to be an effective learning instrument with a group of less experienced developers. It is also used to explore topics outside of just software development. This paper describes how, with a set of weekly Mob Programming sessions, the teams as a whole and all its individuals have grown much faster than they could have done otherwise. They improved their coding skills, mastery of tools, involvement in Scrum ceremonies, estimation skills, process modeling (!) and learned to be much more self-sufficient. This didn’t happen without plenty of experimentation, and some dead ends. I will describe the different approaches we tried, how we ended up with a surprisingly strict process for our mobbing sessions, and how acceptance was easier with a team that had fewer ingrained habits of work.