Patterns: Casual driver

Also Known As

Context

A small, experienced mob that is good at working well together.

A curious, exploratory period.

(Optionally) People are eating.

Purpose

Optimize for more conversation than action.

How To

Don’t bother with a timer and with explicit roles. Everyone is free to speak ideas, including the Driver. The Driver is free to carry out their own ideas, but must announce them first

Pay attention to signs that this approach has stopped working, and switch back to more structured mobbing:

• Someone is not fully engaged.
• The Driver is doing their own thing without speaking their idea to the group.
• A non-Driver spoke an idea and the Driver is ignoring it.
• An action answer a question more quickly and effectively.

Consequences

This is risky, and usually an anti-pattern called “Not Mobbing”.

Collaborators

AKA and Cross References

Very similar to the “Plowing Through” pattern combined with the “Think out loud” pattern from https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/experience-reports/harvesting-mob-programming-patterns-observing-how-we-work/