Mobbing, Pairing, Soloing, and Pipe Fires: A Personal History of Collaboration

Pair programming: the practice you love to hate! Twenty years after being introduced as part of Extreme Programming, the collaborative practice is still a thing. And if you thought pairing was nuts, now there's mobbing, where the entire team works together on one thing at a time. Yet we often hear teams say, "We go faster because we are mobbing." In this anecdote-heavy session, you'll hear Jeff Langr's history of working through various models for collaboration (or not) across the past several decades, including solo programming, pairing, and mobbing. He'll show you his office blueprints to help put you in his shoes and understand what contributed to the ups and downs of each model. You'll learn tips for success, pitfalls to watch out for, and Jeff's take on why mobbing or pairing might help us go faster. Come with a willingness to lose your preconceptions.