Re: [extremeprogramming] Pairing styles

I'd like to share my experience with mobbing...

I was part of a team with a wide gap in technical skills and some bold personalities.  The team had been pairing for years, but there was a lot of social dysfunction.  I was the most recent addition to the team.  Standups were too long, and there was conversation such as "why did X take so long", and "why did you go with that implementation" (a little more subtle, but this was the gist of the meaning behind it). The team started a re-charter and decided to only make technical decisions based on a majority vote with a quorum present. This was going downhill fast. I sent out one of Woody Zuill's mob programming talks, and asked if the team wanted to try an experiment in mobbing. It was awkward at first, we started introducing some tweaks to our practice by having a 5 minute mini retro at the end of each mobbing session. Among the tweaks were 1 navigator (everyone else write stuff down and save your idea or pass it to the official navigator), 25 minute rotations, someone is designated time keeper, and the mob is optional so come and go as necessary.  The navigator would also rotate opposite the driver, so each team member would be re-engaged with an active role twice per 3 hour mobbing session.  It was so successful (as in, better than what was happening before) the team stopped standup meetings(we all knew what we did yesterday), the skill gap was shrinking, and trust was re-established. I left for a 3-week vacation, and came back to see the group was still mobbing 6+ hours per day. It also helped that the product owner would sit in with the mob about 50% of the time, so trust was also re-established with the business starting to see results of features being worked on.  It also made it very obvious when we needed to stop to re-plan or clarify acceptance criteria. I was eventually planning to move back into pairing, but the group preferred to keep mobbing. I have since moved on from that team but it has definitely been an interesting experience to see how a long-term (4 months+) mobbing can transform a dysfunctional team.

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