Mob programming, the art of multiple programmers collaborating on one computer and still being efficient.<p>Have you tried it and did it work out?<p>By trying I mean doing it on production code for more than one day.
We have now tried it for on one consecutive week and to my opinion with great success!<p>The benefits that people are claiming I find are true, so far. It’s different, but it has almost eliminated all lead and wait time for us which I consider to be a huge obstacle for effectiveness.<p>I got convinced by The book The Art of Agile Development (<a href="https://programmingbooks.dev/#the-art-of-agile-development" rel="nofollow">https://programmingbooks.dev/#the-art-of-agile-development</a>) where he describes mob programming as an easy mode for collaboration.<p>We used the book Code with the Wisdom of the Crowd (<a href="https://programmingbooks.dev/more/#code-with-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd" rel="nofollow">https://programmingbooks.dev/more/#code-with-the-wisdom-of-t...</a>) as a guide to learn of to do mob programming.
I have and I can't think of anything worse for developers. Being on the phone all day, group solving problems is a great for the below average to hide within the group.
I wonder how Robin Dunbar [1] would weigh in on this question. He originally wrote that the largest stable social network was around 150 people - laying waste to people on MySpace claiming 1000+ friends. More recently, he co-authored a paper which says it' closer to half dozen. If you have a large group, you break it up into smaller "committees" - in World of Warcraft, guilds have role players. The WorldCafe [2] argues for 5.<p>In a recent "agile" project we formed a group of 5 people, 3 of which took on the software dev task and the result was fantastic.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar</a><p>[2] <a href="http://theworldcafe.com/" rel="nofollow">http://theworldcafe.com/</a>
Some time ago I talked about my experience with mob programming here and it got quite a good discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30383382" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30383382</a>
The thing about mob programming is that it tends to lead to GroupThink. Mob programming feels good because you're not alone in facing this problem, which is a very human response. However, feeling good is not a reliable indicator of progress. In fact, I would argue that discomfort is a sign of potential growth. As long as you're not harming yourself or others, discomfort can be a sign telling you you're headed in the right direction.<p>Either way, it's just a job and as long as you're behaving lawfully, there are no real consequences for you if you make poor decisions as a group. The project may or may not succeed, but at least you had fun, right?
A company I worked at introduced it and my productivity fell through the floor. I gave it 6 months before concluding that it wasn't an environment that suited me, and moved on.<p>Some people thrive, some people tolerate it, and some people consider it hell.