Mob Programming: Moving from a Multi-Mob Project to a Single Mob Project and the Sense of Accomplishment
I just hit my one year anniversary at my organization as a mob programming software engineer. I wanted to share one of the experiences I have had over the course of that year.
During my first 9 months at Hunter, I worked with the same team. The team consisted of eight developers. This team generally had two mobs going. So, I would be switching mobs on roughly a weekly basis. This meant I was changing tasks being worked on and not always seeing tasks to completion since I would switch to the second mob. This all sounds great sharing knowledge and changing mobs being worked with.
The big change came in February. I changed projects. I moved to a team of just three developers including me, so a much smaller team. With just three developers this means we are a single mob all the time, every day. The biggest difference is no more switching between mobs, no more switching between tasks. I am seeing all our tasks from start to finish. It might seem difficult to work with the same two other people every day but honestly, they are great!
This no more switching of mobs, no more switching of tasks has led me to have a much greater sense of accomplishment when it comes to programming. Something I have heard from more than one developer has been their feelings of lack of accomplishment. They think they are just a tiny piece of a much larger project. Or simply the fact that they cannot physically s ee or hold their project makes them feel less accomplished. Putting your code on a flash drive and waving it around saying, "look at what I made", is not all that fulfilling.
The fact that all three of us on the teamwork together always, all three of us complete tasks to the end together, and all three of us struggle through the hard problems makes for a strong accomplished team.
Numerous times while working on my old team of eight, one mob would be struggling with a challenging problem while the other was working on a different problem less challenging. One mob would be having a bad day trudging through a problem while the other was moving forward at a normal pace. The pain was not always shared but due to having two mobs it could not be shared, that is just how it was.
Now, it is never fun to have painful programming days but at least if the whole team shares the pain it can be more of a team-building experience rather than team dividing. When a problem is solved by the whole team together a greater sense of ability is shared and most importantly if the same problem comes up again later we can crush it!
I mentioned above the task switching problem and that was a major hindrance to the feeling of accomplishment. At times, I would be working on a problem all week and just when we were about to get to the light at the end of the tunnel I would switch mobs. I felt almost robbed of the accomplishment. I know I was a major player in the completion of the task, but damn, it hurt just a little to be taken away before seeing it to the end.
Do not get me wrong, one of the strongest points of mob programming is the switching of mobs within a team to ensure no knowledge silos are formed. But it is important to see the other impacts that switching teams has. I felt somewhat cheated about getting to complete something I had worked a long time on, but also I felt I lost some learning because I did not get to participate in the final steps to solving the problem.
Overall on my new smaller team, I feel more accomplished. I am seeing all our tasks to completion, I am struggling through the difficult parts altogether as a team, and I get the fullest sense of learning because I was not taken away at any point from the problem. Again, I had plenty of feelings of accomplishment and achievement while on the larger mob, but now I get to experience every accomplishment and achievement with the smaller team.
Expect more posts and experience reports about switching from a large mob to small.