From my talk at Agile Israel 2019: A description of the possibilities of team work in software development and a straightforward process for getting there: provide the permission to work together, start mobbing, encourage pairing and remove personal assignments.

1. Teamwork!
Energy, Productivity, Pairing and Mobbing
Yaki Koren
Lead coach
Yaki@agilesparks.com
052-6194449

2. 2 |
Let’s talk about what’s
happening after the
developer sits at their
chair

3. 3 |
Yaki – The new guy
There’s the new guy.
Doesn’t know the
system, nor anything
much else.

4. Progress
That’s how his
progress looks like.

5. 5 |
Kobi – The expert
This is the guy doing
most of the team’s
work.

6. Progress
6 |
But even he is making
mistakes.

7. 7 |
Yaakov – The experienced
Most of the team.
Know a lot but there’s
a lot they don’t know.
Now he is thinking:
now how should I do
this?

8. Progress
8 |
Making progress,
slowly but surely.

9. 9 |
So most of the team
makes slow progress.
Are we OK with this?

10. 10 |
And that’s the awful
truth. Writing
software is hard. And
it is even harder to
understand that it’s
hard. It’s like nothing
else we know. And
this is why we need
something that’s very
strong to make it
work.

11. 11 |
What more can we do?

12. 12 |
Teamwork!

13. 13 |
Team work! Making
humanity work for
more than 10,000
years!

14. “Divide and conquer”
14 |
Pros Cons
Easy to plan/control Long cycle time
Easy to measure Slow people growth
Convenient Team spirit
Pros and Cons of “no
team work” approach

15. 15 |
The Teamwork Manifesto
Sharing knowledge over self improvement
Working together over individual work
Talking ideas over presenting final work products
Team over ego
While we understand the items on the right are important we believe the items on the
left will lead to better results, personally and team wise.
We need to find the right balance.

16. 16 |
How can we get there?

17. Step 1: Provide the permission to teamwork
 Give permission to work together
 Publicly praise team players
 Privately ask Kobis (experts) to spend time helping people
 Avoid measuring individual tasks
 Walk the talk
17 |

18. Step 2: Mob
programming
 A great technique for collaboration,
alignment, barrier breaking and
productivity
 The whole team develops together
 Keyboard moves every few minutes
 Person on keyboard does not “think”
18 |

19. Mob programming best practices
 Move the keyboard every 5 minutes
 One team member should take time – use an alarm so everyone
will hear it
 In case one team member is taking over the conversation assign a
navigator – the person that decides what the driver will do.
Navigators switch every time the driver does
 You don’t undo what the previous navigator did – you try keeping
the same direction

20. Start mobbing!
 Set a recurring mobbing
session of 1.5 – 2 hours.
 If you have a specific
difficult task, set a longer
time and just get done
with it
 Make sure you have a
good room with a big
screen and a wireless
keyboard

21. Step 3: Pairing
 Pairing is not new, yet not widely adopted
 It is more convenient working alone than in a pair yet it is not as
gratifying. Help people get there.
 Pairing is intense. Take breaks.
 Two main pairing schemes:
 To ramp up: Teacher – student (teacher never touches the keyboard)
 Peers (every few minutes change driver. Only pair with someone you appreciate)
 In both schemes, all thoughts should be first said, only then go to
the keyboard

22. Start Pairing!
 Look for pairing
opportunities during the
daily meeting
 Pairing sessions should be
1-2 hours long
 Use pairing to move from
teacher – student to peers
22 |

23. Step 4: No “Assigned” people on tasks
 Work according to priority
 Reduce number of active
items
Assigned: Yaki
Assigned: Kobi
Assigned: Yaki
Assigned: Yaki
Assigned: Kobi
Assigned: Yaakov
Assigned: Yaakov
Assigned: Yaki

24. Real Teamwork
24 |
Pros Cons
High energy Lower control
High quality Intensive. Take breaks!
Knowledge
alignment/Versatility
~15% higher effort short term
Almost twice as fast

25. Bettering Teamwork
1. Provide the permission to work together
2. Mob programming
3. Pairing
4. No “Assigned” people on tasks, lower number of active items (WIP)
25 |

26. Thank You!
26 |
 Contact me at Yaki@agilsparks.com