Mob Programming

I had a conversation with the Mob Mentality crew about certifications in the agile space. Austin Chadwick and Chris Lucian host Mob Mentality and work at the company that discovered modern Mob Programming, aka Ensemble Programming or Software Teaming.  They have been sharing how they’ve benefited from working together as a team to deliver valuable solutions.

Our chat covers certifications – are they a good thing? Evil in all cases? And why do I offer a course that is certified by the Scrum Alliance?

I know a lot of us have been working in an agile manner for a long time. Yet I’ve seen my class being some developers’ first exposure to Extreme Programming practices such as automated unit tests, test first development, and working together on code. Austin echoed as much from his experience. Chris also mentioned the value in having a team attend the same training in order to come away with a shared vocabulary and approach. 

As part of the southern California agile community I expect that everyone has heard of Mob Programming by now. Woody Zuill and the Hunter team have been sharing their findings with us for almost a decade. Yet most classes I teach are hearing of working together this way for the first time. They also get a chance to practice it in class on coding exercises. And I’ve found that this practice of working together on a story is one of the most adopted techniques teams take back to work with them.

Take a listen to our conversation and let me know what you think!