What is going right: Mob Programming Benefits (Part 4)
I have been so busy with the teaching job that I have not had time to dedicate to this blog. Hopefully the teaching gets easier and cools down soon. It should now that the semester is just about done and there is not too much left in lesson plan prep.
But enough about me, here is What is going right: Mob Programming Benefits (Part 4). I will give a short explanation on the two benefits below highlighting the great parts of Mob Programming. Check out the other parts of the series for even more benefits of mob programming and expect more posts in the future.
- Divide and Conquer
- Accountability
Divide and Conquer
I am on a small three person mob working with a technology that none of us have had prior experience in outside of our current project. This means we run into situations that no one knows the answer to. How do we solve these complex problems? Well rather than squander around the code all together often we take a Divide and Conquer approach.
By divide and conquer, I mean that we will all split up and begin researching/attempting solutions/poking around the code all on our own. This may sound a lot more like traditional programming where everyone is by themselves working through problems and it kind of is.
The mob programming aspect comes into play whenever anyone finds a good example/article/forum post related to our issue. We share the findings and discuss them together immediately. Maybe the new knowledge helps connect the dots with what someone else was already reading or thinking about. Maybe the team decides that it does not relate, so we do not waste anymore time looking at it.
We take a divide and conquer approach but share all the knowledge along the way and get more research done while still keeping everyone informed.
Accountability
In software, it can be easy to take the easy path instead of the harder but infinitely better path. When writing software you may think "Oh this will not be my problem in the future" or "I don't need to test this feature it will never break".
In my mob we hold each other accountable and ensure that we are not skimping just to make things easier for ourselves. I will relate this to testing because its an easy target. We test EVERYTHING. No matter how small we make sure to right a test first. Sometimes one of use will get an inkling that maybe we can skip the test on this one. Or we just straight up forget to write the test.
Having the mob, we always have someone to reign us all back in and remind us of the software practices we need in order to maintain quality. As a mob we are all accountable for one another and we use this to ensure we are always writing the best software.
That concludes What is Going Right: Mob Programming Benefits (Part 3), check out the other posts in the series.
What is going right: Mob Programming (Part 3)