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I have not had the chance yet to use mob programming on a real project. But I have used it when teaching workshops and trainings. And it worked pretty well. The first thing I noticed is that no-one tuned out. When I organized my trainings so that participants do the exercises alone or in pairs, some would just not do them. They might have too much problems to even get started. Or, when pairing with a better developer, just let them do the work. In the mob, paid attention everybody joined the discussion. [1]
Also, I think there was a better shared understanding of the examples and the solutions after the mob programming. When working in pairs, I had to monitor 5-8 pairs in parallel and give them hints and explain stuff. With the mob, I could concentrate on one screen and join the discussion all the time. And: Others were helping me out. At one point, a participant said: "I don't want to take the driver seat, I am no programmer, just a manager". Before I could even say something, someone else from the audience said: "Come on, try it. We tell you what to write, and after 10 minutes, we'll change again anyway". So, to recap: I really like mob programming for teaching. I think it could also work well when a team wants to learn something new, has a hard design session or wants to bring new team members up to speed. I even think it could work during day-to-day work, but I have never tried that. [1] Maybe I was just lucky and had a great group when we were duing mob programming. But I doubt that. |
I don't know about day-to-day or in a classroom setting though. Whenever I did pair programming in college, one of the partners would often be overpowering in terms of skills and intelligence, and would spend most of the time getting the other up to pace. Which is great, except the laggards would often pretend to understand in fear of being looked upon as stupid.
As someone who's been on both side of the dynamics, yeahh, not sure about classroom settings. I would love to attend your workshops though!