“I hear a lot of talk about pair/mob/ensemble programming, but does this work in any other fields?”

A discussion I was recently involved in.

How about ensemble writing?

“That would never work,” one person chimed in.

Really?

I bet we all do it more often than we realize.

At least weekly, I’m on a Zoom call where someone is sharing their screen and writing something (a technical requirement, an email to a colleague or customer, the summary of a meeting) and three other people jump in “Sorry, that should be 50, not 500” or “I think it would sound better if you say add ‘I think’”.

I bet for most of us, if we start paying attention, we’ll realize we do the same thing pretty frequently, in all sorts of contexts.

I think what makes ensemble writing (and so many other things) strange is that we just don’t think about them… not that we don’t do them.