Mobbing on Trivial Work

Sometimes when you’re mobbing, you’ll come across trivial work that needs to get done. Trivial work isn’t less important but it is simple and repetitive.

What Usually Happens

For new mobs, when they first come across trivial work, they often march along in lock step, mobbing as they would with any other type of work.

Why This Is a Bad Idea

There’s little value in having the entire mob focus their energy on simple and repetitive work. Instead, you need a mindshift change.

What to Do Instead

Willem Larsen,^[42] inventor of the Mob Programming Role Playing Game,^[43] explained the mindshift change best in an email correspondence:

“We treat the mob as almost the bridge of starship. When it’s appropriate to all stare at the viewscreen and respond appropriately with each of our contributions (i.e., working on production code), we do so. But sometimes a smaller problem requires one of us to hunker down and create a short simple script. Or someone is doing “science officer” research, etc. But we’re usually still all there, on “the bridge,” still all have one eye on the mob as a whole, we still can discuss our movement forward or do a short retro on where we’ve come from and strategize. Due to the intensity of the colocation we’re able to accomplish so much more, and form and re-form around the challenge.”