Our latest experience report is from Chris Lucien of Hunter Industries. Chris is the Director of Software Development at Hunter, but is not the team’s manager. Management tasks are spread amongst the mobbers. Chris is a spokesman, advocate, and champion for the way their teams work.
Mob programming was discovered at Hunter in 2011 when the programming team decided to swarm together to solve a problem. They found they liked that experience so much that they decided to see what would happen if they all worked together, programing, daily. They found that five sets of eyes and minds proved better for them than solo or pair programming. And although team members sometimes work solo, they’ve grown to love working in a mob.
Over a period of 4 years, the single team at Hunter perfected how they learned together, worked productively, and incorporated visitors and others into their daily mob. In 2015, partly because the team was so successful, Hunter decided to scale their mob programming effort. Over the last year they have grown from a single team to eight teams of mobbers. This is the story of how they grew and learned to adapt to their new larger group environment while preserving their culture, values, and practices.
