Collective Ownership through Mob Programming
Managers light a fire under people; leaders light a fire in people — Kathy Austin
Leadership as an ability. When someone takes on a management role, they only sometimes become a great leader. Leadership skills are complex. They take a long time to build, and I don't remember you finishing improving them. You can build leadership skills before a leadership role. You shouldn’t wait either. Start building your skills before you need them.
Leadership as a collective noun. Companies, departments, and teams all draw on the concept of a “leadership team.” More than one person is needed to manage complexity which is why leadership teams exist. When a team practices Collective Ownership, knowledge becomes distributed across the team. Each team member gains a better understanding of the boundaries between modules and the way that the system works.
Leaders set the organization’s tone and reinforce the desired cultural norms. — Accelerate.
Several techniques help with the efforts. Those techniques point towards increased Ownership.
Mob Programming is one of the newest techniques promoting collaboration. It could be effective for a formalized workflow because it is harder to communicate in bigger teams. The technique can help share learning and suggestions for a particular effort. You’ll want the help of many eyes to get the best refactoring results. All these benefits come with the price of learning to share knowledge. Need to align the entire team towards the same goal while applying any Refactoring efforts. It is one of the most important to have first.
Pair programming is the second most crucial technique. It can even reduce the time it takes to code review if used. The combination of both of these techniques leads to higher quality due to the improved feedback loop that the team gets per feature.
Ownership improves honesty with ourselves and others. Mop or pair programming are essential practices to consider before and after doing Refactoring.
[¹]: Mob programming — Wikipedia
[²]: Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
