When I facilitate an ensemble session (also called Mob Programming) with a team, I’m often asked what work we should pick to work on. The answer is really whatever we would have done this week anyway.
Too many teams try to pick the “perfect” piece of work for the ensemble, and when they do, they inevitably pick something that nobody really cares about.
We’re not doing katas or fake examples. We’re not picking up that item that you’ve wanted to do for the last year but never got around to.
We’re picking something important enough that we would have done it this week anyway.
That could be implementing a new feature request, or fixing a bug, or performance tuning. The actual type of work doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s something that we care about finishing.