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Testing Ask Me Anything - Collaboration, Pairing and Mobbing

10th January 2023

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Lisi Hocke

Senior Expert Quality Engineer

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How do you deal with challenges when collaborating with someone who may hold a more senior or junior position to you?

What in your experience do testers that don't programme bring to a mob programming group? And why shouldn't they worry about slowing others down?

How do you go about setting up pairing or mob programming sessions for the first time in an organisation where people are very individualistic?

How do you find a balance between pair and mob programming and ensuring introverts on your team don't burn out from the energy drain of constant social interaction?

What tools and strategies can help support remote MOB programming?

Can you describe your experiences with strong style pairing, traditional pairing and not using a structured process while working together on a task. And what are the benefits of challenges of these approaches?

Mobbing brings many benefits, but can it be intimidating for testers mobbing with experienced developers?

Not everyone feels comfortable working in groups, so how would you encourage someone to give pairing or mobbing a go?

Which options for taking notes during a test session have you tried, with a pair or with a mob. What works best and why and what changes when doing that remotely?

How to convince your team that having collaborative sessions like three amigo's is actually saving time and not a time consuming affair?

How do you document a mob testing session?

Do you expect people to do TDD in programming mobs?

Do you have advice for how to deal with loud and quiet people to make mobbing a good experience for all?

How do you go from being a cuckoo in a team that does not want you to showing you are adding value?

When is pairing or mobbing not a good idea?

What red flags should we look out for to recognise that continuing with a mobbing or pairing session isn't the most productive way to move forward?

When you want to start pairing with a developer is it best to start pairing on their work (programming) or our work (testing) and does it matter in your experience?

How would you gauge the cultural readiness of an organisation/team to try some of the collaborative approaches?

Description

Our host Vernon Richards was joined by Elisabeth Hocke to answer all your questions.

Software development is all about people. We build products for people, together with people – therefore, collaboration skills are crucial for success. But how to work well together? Let’s answer your questions around collaboration and collaborative approaches like pairing and mobbing!

This AMA is kindly sponsored by Wonderproxy. Thanks to WonderProxy who make it easy to test your website from around the world. If you're showing different content to users depending on where they are in the world stop using hacks to see if it's working, and start seeing exactly what your users see with WonderProxy.

Lisi Hocke

Senior Expert Quality Engineer

Lisi found tech as her place to be in 2009 and grew as a specialized generalist ever since. She's passionate about the whole-team approach to holistic testing and quality and enjoys experimenting and learning continuously. Building great products which deliver value together with great people motivates her and lets her thrive. Having received a lot from communities, she's paying it forward by sharing her stories and learning in public. She tweets as @lisihocke, toots as @lisihocke@mastodon.social and blogs at www.lisihocke.com. In her free time, she plays indoor volleyball or delves into computer games and stories of all kinds.