It’s interesting that when a team tries ensemble work (also called mob programming), it feels really slow. Slower than it actually is.
It’s common to hear during the debrief that people enjoyed it and that they learned something and that they feel the quality of the work was better but “we went so much slower”.
What makes that so interesting is that on the occasions that I’ve actually tracked how long we’ve taken to get the work done, it’s been at least as fast, if not faster, than if we had split the work up and had each person work individually on their part.
To be very clear what I’m saying, if there are four people working in ensemble, they will complete as much in a day as those same four people working individually for a day. This is really counter-intuitive for most people; we naturally assume that four people working together will only be as productive as one person working individually.
The most dramatic example of this was just recently with a team that completed as much work in two days as an ensemble than that same team did working individually in the following eight days. Effectively being four times as productive when in an ensemble. What makes this particular example even more astounding is that this was the first time they’d ever worked this way, and they didn’t think they were going very fast at all.
That example isn’t typical in my experience but what is typical is that we are at least as productive together in an ensemble than when all those same people were working individually. Yet it always feels as if we’re moving slower. Much slower.
So when people say that ensemble work, or pairing, is slower then I encourage you to actually measure the results. Don’t just rely on how it feels. That feeling is deceptive.
A couple of notes:
- I always ask for two full days when introducing a team to ensemble work. If you only book a few hours, you may not see the same benefits. It needs time to get going, albeit not that much time.
- Ensemble work is not just a matter of getting a bunch of people together and telling them to work. There is a structure to this, with some specific rules and like anything new, this really benefits from having an experienced facilitator. If you aren’t following the structure or don’t have an experienced facilitator, it may take longer before the team starts to become productive.
- You may think that you’ll only get this benefit if the entire ensemble is in the same room and that’s not true. This works just as well when everyone is fully remote. The extremely productive example above was a team that was fully remote.
- I’ve not had great results with a hybrid environment were some are in the room and some are not and I’d advise against this. If some people are remote then treat everyone as remote and have them call in from their desks, even if they’re in the same building.
I’ve introduced hundreds of teams to ensemble work over the last decade and can help your teams get started.