Mob Programming
Mob Programming
A Whole Team Approach
About the Book
To our valued readers: We thank for your purchases and support over the years. We have retired this version of the book because we have a second edition available with a new publisher. Those who have purchased the first edition will still be able to download it from LeanPub.
The second edition includes new material on teams, the power of flow, remote Mob Programming, and more. It is available at
"All the brilliant minds working together on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer" - We call it "Mob Programming". With dual projectors, one computer, two keyboards, and a very collaborative approach we use this approach to super-charge our development efforts and deliver high value software quickly.
In this book we share our "Mob Programming" style. We'll cover the techniques we use in our daily work , how we discovered this way of working, the benefits we see from "Mobbing", the problems we've overcome, and how you can incorporate some of our ideas even though you don't have a way to adopt Mob Programming full time.
About the Authors
About the Contributors
Griffith
Bowler
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Part One: Introduction
-
1.1 What is Mob Programming?
- How We Started
- What’s in a Name?
- Why this Book?
-
1.2 Set the Stage for Great Things
- It’s About the Environment
- We Work Better when We Work Together.
- The Stage was Set
-
1.3 A View of the Room
- A little peek at what it looks like
-
1.4 See for Yourself
- Watch a video of a full day of work in only 3 minutes!
-
1.5 How We Discovered Mob Programming
- The Driver-Navigator Model
- The Coding Dojo Sessions
- Studying and Practicing Together
- The Next (In)Obvious Steps
- 1.6 Quick Start Guide
- Part Two: The Details
-
2.1 The Team
- The Mob Programming Team
-
2.2 The Workspace Setup
- Introduction
- The Area
- The Computer
- Projectors or Monitors
- Keyboard/Mouse
- Chairs and Tables
- Telephone and Email
- Ergonomics
- Private Work Area
-
2.3 The Driver-Navigator Model In-Depth
- The Navigators and Navigation
- The Driver and Driving
- The Consultation - The Pause for Clarity
- Conflicting Ideas
- An Example
- Rotating the Roles
- A Timer
- Summary
-
2.4 Why Would We Work This Way?
- There are Many Benefits from Working as a Mob Programming team
- It’s a Trick Question
- The Typical Answers
- The Real Answer: We Work this Way Because the Team Decided to Work this Way
- Provide a Safe Place Where We can Discover Awesomeness
-
2.5 How Can We Work This Way?
- A Principle to Live By
- It’s the People, not the Code
- Our Story
- Kindness, Consideration, and Respect
- Part Three: Productivity
-
3.1 The Productivity Question
- How Can Five People At One Computer Be Productive?
- Changing the question
- What we found with Mob Programming
- Another way to think about it
-
3.2 Problems That Faded Away
- It’s The System?
- A Backpacking Trip
- Management Overhead
- Working Well Together
- What’s Coming Up in the Next Chapters
-
3.3 Problem: Faulty Communications
- Communication problems are pervasive, numerous, and paralyzing.
- Problem: Getting Answers to Questions can take a lot of time.
- Problem: Communication by Email
- Problem: Communication by Documentation
-
3.4 Problem: Issues with Decision Making
- Decisions are a Good Thing
-
3.5 Problem: Doing More Than What is Barely Sufficient
- Should We Ever do More than Enough?
- Examples of “Too Much”
- How Mob Programming has Helped
- Conclusion
-
3.6 Problem: Technical Debt
- The Alligator in the Pond
- It Faded Away
- The Many Forms of Technical Debt
- Conclusion
-
3.7 Problem: Thrashing
- Distractions, Context Switching, Interruptions: This is Thrashing
- Thrashing of Programmers
- Who Gets Thrashed?
- Why is Thrashing Harmful?
- How it Faded Away for Us
- Recap
-
3.8 Problem: Politics
- Many faces of politics
- It Faded Away
-
3.9 Problem: Meetings
- “Please, sir, I want some more meetings.”
-
3.10 A Simple Cost Analysis of Mob Programming
- Sensitivity Analysis
- Summary
- References
-
3.11 The Power of Flow
- References
- Part Four: A Few Other Things
- 4.1 What is the Ideal Number of Team Members?
-
4.2 Continuous Learning
- Providing an Environment where Learning is “Amplified”
- Study and Practice Together
- Friday Afternoon Practice
- Mob Programming and Learning
- Our Morning Hour of Learning
- Amplifying Learning
-
4.3 Exposed
- The Fear of Being Exposed
- Why It Might be Frightening
- What can we do about this?
- Mistakes are Part of the Process
- This is Voluntary
- Conclusion
-
4.4 Ergonomics, Health, and Sanity
- Let’s Take Care of Ourselves
- Projectors, Chairs, Keyboards, and Screens
- Stretching, Talking Walks, Taking Breaks
- Preventing the Spread of Illness
- Sanity
- In Conclusion
-
4.5 Retrospectives: Reflect, Tune, and Adjust Frequently
- If You Only have Time to get Good at One Thing, Start with Retrospectives
- An Example of a Typical Retrospective
- An Affinity Mapping Example
- Give it a Name
- Here is What We Decided to Try
- A Daily Practice Period
- Another Retrospective, Another Step Forward: The 12 Days of Index
- Things to Notice
- The Takeaway
-
4.6 Turn Up The Good
- Something that Works Well: Turn Up the Good
- Solving Problems - What’s Wrong with That?
- Turn Up The Good
-
4.7 Relaxed and Sustainable
- This is Wearing Us Out!
- The Problem
- We Don’t Need to Be a Hero
- Take a Break
- Make it Sustainable
-
4.8 Barriers to Mob Programming
- My Manager Won’t Let Us
- We Don’t Have a Space to Do It
- We Don’t Know How to Get Started
- Our Teams Don’t Even Want to Pair Program
- The Tech Lead Coded While Everyone Watched
- We were Exhausted After a Few Hours
- We aren’t Really Very Agile.
-
4.9 Remote Mob Programming
- Introduction
- Advantages to Working Remotely
- Can We “Turn Up The Good” on Working Remotely?
- How do we do this?
- Are we Effective when we are Remote?
- Things to Watch Out For
- Exploring and Experimenting
- 4.10 Frequently Asked Questions
-
4.11 Do We Recommend Mob Programming?
- Everyone Wants to Know: Do You Recommend Mob Programming?
- To Whose Advantage?
- It is Not a Panacea
- If You Decide to Try It
- Part Five: Experience Reports
- 5.1 Teaching Mob Programming
- 5.2 Using Mob Programming as a Training Tool
-
5.3 Mob Programming for the Introverted
- Introduction
- Background
- Observations of Mob Life
- Mob Programming as an Introvert
- Change and Growth
- What I Have Learned
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 5.4 Corgibytes Adopts Mob Programming
- 5.5 Sticky Mob Programming
- Appendix 1 - The Agile Manifesto
- Appendix 2 - Twelve Principles of Agile Software
- Notes
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$12,151,660writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #2
CCIE Service Provider Version 4 Written and Lab Exam Comprehensive Guide
Nicholas RussoThe service provider landscape has changed rapidly over the past several years. Networking vendors are continuing to propose new standards, techniques, and procedures for overcoming new challenges while concurrently reducing costs and delivering new services. Cisco has recently updated the CCIE Service Provider track to reflect these changes; this book represents the author's personal journey in achieving that certification.
- #3
CCIE SP v5.0
Łukasz Bromirski, Piotr Jablonski, and Nicholas RussoAre you striving to prepare to and pass CCIE SP lab exam? Take the opportunity and get this workbook! With the attached initial cfg files you will prepare yourself for the CCIE SP exam as well as learn SP technologies applicable to all kinds of today modern networks! This workbook covers blueprint topics and provides challenging examples.
- #4
Functional Programming Made Easier
Charles ScalfaniA Functional Programming book from beginner to advanced without skipping a single step along the way.
In my 40 years of programming, I've felt that programming books always let me down, especially Functional Programming books. So, I wrote the book I wish I had 5 years ago.
Functional Programming will never be easy, but it can be easier.
- #5
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
- #6
Windows 11 Field Guide
Rafael Rivera and Paul ThurrottThe Windows 11 Field Guide is a full-length e-book about the latest version of Microsoft Windows, aimed at those users who will upgrade from Windows 10 or acquire Windows 11 with a new PC.
- #7
Production Haskell
Matt ParsonsAre you excited about Haskell, but don't know where to begin? Are you thrilled by the technical advantages, but worried about the unknown pitfalls? This book has you covered.
- #8
The PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking Book
Don Jones and Jeff HicksLearn the patterns, practices, and details of PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking from the industry's two most recognized experts on the subject.
- #9
Jetpack Compose internals
Jorge CastilloJetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. Master how it works internally and become a more efficient developer with it. You'll also find it valuable if you are not an Android dev. This book provides all the details to understand how the Compose compiler & runtime work, and how to create a client library using them.
- #10
The Art of Functional Programming
Minh Quang Tran, PhDA master class on the fundamentals and principles of functional programming. It contains 20 programming challenges with detailed solutions and 44 quizzes with answers and explanations. Moreover, 84 diagrams graphically illustrate how concepts and techniques work. Two real-world use cases show how to apply functional programming in practice.
Top Bundles
- #1
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #3
1500 QUIZ COMMENTATI (3 libri)
3 Books
Tre libri dei QUIZ MMG Commentati al prezzo di DUE! I QUIZ dei concorsi ufficiali di Medicina Generale relativi agli anni: 2000-2001-2003-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017-2018-2019-2020-2021 +100 inediti Raccolti in unico bundle per aiutarvi nello studio e nella preparazione al concorso. All'interno di ogni libro i quiz sono stati suddivisi per... - #4
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #5
Growing Agile: The Complete Coach's Guide
7 Books
Growing Agile: Coach's Guide Series This bundle provides a collection of training and workshop plans for a variety of agile topics. The series is aimed at agile coaches, trainers and ScrumMasters who often find themselves needing to help teams understand agile concepts. Each book in the series provides the plans, slides, handouts and activity... - #9
Statistics - All Lee Baker's Books
10 Books
This bundle includes all of the statistics books that Lee Baker has published at LeanPub 13 Statistics Books*1 PlaceNo Hassle! All in both epub and mobi formats - perfect for all devices and screen sizes. --------------------------------------------------------- *The book listed as Getting Started With Statistics is a bundle of 4 books...
