Adventures in Mob Programming - Day 4

After getting all rested up yesterday, I was really excited for resuming mob programming today. I see the appeal of the cyclical nature of mobbing; rotating driver and navigator, taking breaks every so often.

Today was a little different than typical work-days, because there was an Agile Alliance Tech Talk that I wanted to attend! I listened along to stand-up as the Tech Talk was spinning up. I really enjoyed today's talk, titled "The Future of XP," facilitated by Cat Swetel and featuring Tiani Jones, Jesse Alford, and Wouter Lagerweij.

I love to live-tweet virtual talks I attend, so take a look at my Twitter thread here:

When the talk was over, I took a short break then jumped in with the mob.

We actually got to write some fresh, new code - a new feature for one of the products that we sell. This was also my real first chance to practice things like TDD or coding by intention - things that matter to me, but that I've never been able to try in the real world. It was a little clunky at first, but the other folks on my mob are proving to be as excellent of coaches to me as they are to each other.

As we began this work, it was another reminder that I still have a tendency to bite off a smidge more than I can chew. This was an observation I made yesterday, and I'm glad I noticed it sooner today than yesterday. This was really obvious when we wrote our first tests for the feature we wanted to create. I was thinking of the final result only - this complicated, multi-step calculation. The rest of the mob was thinking of just the first piece of this calculation, and it took me a minute to see things the way they did. To me, this feels like the beauty of mob programming - I look deeply, deeply forward to learning good practices from this mob, and eventually from everyone on the team. I already have half of a post on what we were writing! I look forward to finishing that up and sharing soon.

So far, we've been less rigorous with the role of driver/navigator - we absolutely switch driver, but allow for some wiggle-room as far as navigation is concerned. For my first week as a professional mob programmer, this has been perfect. Others may disagree, especially if they feel the structure is essential for the practice, but I find it to be an easier way to dip my toes in. It also gives me the freedom to ask questions whenever I want, as opposed to only when I'm navigator. 

Today we also had the team's weekly retro, which was engineer-led! Having facilitated 4-6 retros a month for the last 18 months as a scrum master, this was very refreshing. At Hunter, I have yet to meet a project manager. Its delightful to focus on just technical problems, and being part of a team that takes ownership over them. It was a simple Liked/Learned/Lacked structure, and at the end we decided on action items, voted on the ones that mattered most, and assigned owners to that work. I look forward to my opportunity to facilitate one as a true peer, instead of an outsider.

Another thing I look forward to is tomorrow's internal Open Space! I mentioned on Day 1 that I got a ticket to attend an Open Space conference next week, but the event tomorrow is purely internal, for the mob teams. One of the sessions is working on a code kata together, which I absolutely plan to join in. I have to keep practicing mob programming each chance I get, right???


Some resources for today: