The Mob Mentality Show

Why Legacy Code Is Everyone’s Problem: Wouter Lagerweij on Product & Engineering Ownership

👨‍💻 Legacy code isn’t just old untested code—it’s a symptom of deeper problems in your organization. In this no-fluff episode of the Mob Mentality Show, we’re joined by Agile and technical coach Wouter Lagerweij to break down why legacy issues persist and how shared responsibility between product and engineering is the key to meaningful change.🎯 What we cover in this episode:- Why legacy systems are just as much about organizational baggage as they are about outdated code- How true Agile teaming—swarming, pairing, mobbing—can unlock speed, learning, and fun- Why your bug tracker is a graveyard, and how a zero bug policy can reset your team’s quality barThis is a grounded, experience-rich conversation packed with practical insights for developers, team leads, product managers, and anyone serious about improving delivery without adding more process theater.✅ You’ll come away with:* A broader definition of legacy and how to confront it* Concrete examples of effective team collaboration models* A new perspective on software quality and defect tracking* Proven ways to foster stronger cross-functional ownership👤 **About the guest:**Wouter Lagerweij is an independent Agile Coach based in The Netherlands and operating throughout Europe. He loves spending time with teams and organizations to figure out how to improve the way they make software, and make it more fun. To make that happen he uses the knowledge and skills gathered in over eighteen years of experience applying Agile processes and practices from XP, Scrum, Kanban, Continuous Delivery, DevOps, Lean and Systems Thinking. To turn those improvements into real business opportunities, he has added Lean Startup/Lean Enterprise approaches. Occasionally, he even uses common sense. 😅Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/me9CSgmIRk8 

Powerful, Profitable Software Products – Behind the Book with Kyle Rowland

🎙️ What happens when software engineers and leaders don’t speak the same language? How do context-free Agile practices and technical dogma lead teams astray? And how do we create engineering cultures that deliver real business value without burning out?
In this Mob Mentality Show episode, we sit down with Kyle Rowland—leadership and software consultant, 20-year software engineering veteran, and author of Powerful Profitable Software Products: The Executive Guidebook—to tackle the tough questions at the heart of sustainable, impactful software delivery.
💡 What We Cover in This Episode:
🔧 The Engineering-Leadership Impedance MismatchWhy do engineering leaders and business leaders often talk past each other? Kyle shares how focusing on both “how” we build and “what” we build—can prevent burnout, bottlenecks, and bad outcomes. We explore why real innovation depends on creating win-win systems, not siloed thinking.
⚠️ The Danger of Context-Free AgileMany teams argue about Agile, TDD, TBD, and pairing without understanding the systems that make those practices work. Kyle unpacks how context, principles, and shared goals determine whether these tools help or hurt—and how to avoid cargo cult Agile.
🔬 Empiricism vs. Philosophy in Tech DecisionsIs the Agile Manifesto's call for empiricism enough? Or is there still a place for a priori reasoning (argument from principle) in engineering? Kyle argues for a balanced approach—using experiments where we can, and wisdom where we must.
⏱️ The 1:40 Rule and Escaping Tactical OverloadAre you buried in endless 1-on-1s and tactical firefighting? Kyle introduces the “1:40 rule”—a lens for spotting when leaders are too involved in details and not investing in system-level growth. He explains how to avoid organizational entropy and shift your focus from maintenance to momentum.
📚 Plus: Behind the BookWe go deep on Kyle’s new book Powerful Profitable Software Products, exploring practical ways leaders can move from reactive chaos to purpose-driven product delivery—while empowering teams and aligning with business goals.
🎧 Whether you're an engineering leader, product owner, or software dev, this episode is packed with insights on leadership, systems thinking, quality, speed, and how to build software that matters.FYI: Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/oCK1lMa2s9A  

Liminal Thinking with Dave Gray: Meet the Man Who Accidentally Wrote a Book About Us

What if your beliefs—about work, people, or even yourself—are quietly holding you back? In this episode of The Mob Mentality Show, we sit down with visual thinker, author, and accidental Mob Programming anthropologist Dave Gray to unpack the power of belief, clarity, and collaboration in tech and beyond.
Dave Gray is known for Liminal Thinking—a book about understanding the invisible beliefs that shape behavior and systems. But did he know he was writing a book about us? Turns out, our Mob Programming origin story and Dave’s journey are more connected than you’d expect.
With roots as an artist, Dave brings a rare perspective to complex tech and business systems. From prior infographic posters that demystified RFID and Bluetooth when they first came out, to visual guides on inner transformation and his latest books, Dave's work simplifies the complicated and builds bridges for real understanding.
With Dave we explore:
What led Dave from agile software development to Liminal Thinking
Why most Agile transformations fail 
How to navigate confusing resistance—are people really lost, or just saying “no”?
The principles behind creating safe spaces and disrupting unhelpful routines
Visual and liminal thinking for fostering organic authentic change, not just communication tricks
Raw observation vs. narrative: how perception can distort reality
Why having lunch with someone you think is "crazy" or "stupid" might be the wisest move
The psychology behind tech resistance, organizational inertia, and true agility
We also revisit how Woody Zuill and our original Mob Programming team with Chris Lucian smashed the belief that “real work” only happens in cubicles and outside of "meetings." The mob origin story had Liminal Thinking on full display as that team reflected, questioned, and ultimately acted in defiance of broken norms. The result? A shift in how we define space, collaboration, and innovation as Dave captures in his book. 
If you work in tech, lead change, facilitate teams, or just feel stuck inside outdated ways of working, this episode is for you.Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/fWF6kQBRdhg  

From the Birth of XP to the Death of Scrum with Tobias Mayer

In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with Tobias Mayer—author, coach, and longtime voice in the Agile world—to explore the journey from his early discovery of XP (Extreme Programming) in 1997 all the way to today’s debate around the death of Scrum.
Tobias shares his personal transformation from developer to Scrum Master, his resistance to early XP, and how he learned great practices from developers he managed. We unpack his reflections on Agile’s semantic drift, the role of Scrum Masters as change agents vs. bean counters, and what happens when teams do Agile without even knowing the Agile Manifesto.
🔍 Topics we dive deep into:
Discovering XP through a paper against it 😅
When “Scrum” became a buzzword and what was lost in translation
What it really means to live the values of the Agile Manifesto
XP coaches, grassroots change, and learning from your team
The difference between top-down control and emergent discovery
Misused metaphors in tech: “firefighting,” “war rooms,” “soldiers,” and more
Are software teams more like engineers, artisans, or ensembles?
Can DORA metrics (DevOps Research and Assessment) prove or disprove Agile’s effectiveness?
We also dig into mob programming (aka mobbing)—what it means, why the name matters, and whether or not new metaphors like “ensemble programming” or “teaming” (à la Amy Edmondson) better reflect how high-performing teams really work.
💡 Plus:
The problem with the Product Owner (PO) role in Scrum
Why language in IT shapes behavior—for better or worse
Applying Artful Making to modern product development
Rethinking business through the lens of theatre, philosophy, and cooperative economics
The importance of psychological safety, dissent, and experimentation in creating real agility
Tobias brings rich context from classics, theology, and history—yes, even turning a conference t-shirt into fashion—to challenge how we think about building products, teams, and businesses.
🛠️ Whether you're into XP, Scrum, Mob Programming, Lean, or simply want to rethink your metaphors and language at work, this episode delivers grounded insight, sharp critique, and fresh perspectives.
👉 Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of agile thinking, real teamwork, and modern product development.Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/ZFoY-De91BE   

Overrun Navigators, Strong Opinions, and Doc Reading: Prof Ben’s Mobbing Questions from the Trenches

🎙️ In this episode of The Mob Mentality Show, we’re joined by Professor Ben Kovitz—a former software developer with 15 years of industry experience who went on to earn a PhD and is now teaching Computer Science at Cal Poly Humboldt. Prof Ben flips the script and brings his own real-world mob programming questions—challenges he’s faced while mobbing live with college students in the classroom.
This is not theory. These are hard-won questions from the trenches of mob programming in a learning environment, where curiosity meets complexity, and group dynamics get real.
🔍 We dive deep into 5 key challenges:
1. Deep Thought vs. Mob Timers:How do you carve out time to think deeply, explain thoroughly, or research ideas in a setting where timers tick every 3 minutes? Is it “wrong” to step away from the mob to figure something out? We discuss balancing solo exploration with group momentum, and how to build a culture that supports both.
2. Upfront Design or Just Start Mobbing?Do you need to pre-design work before mobbing, or can product discovery and agile planning happen in the mob itself? We explore Kanban, Continuous Delivery (CD), and even SPIDR story splitting as tools for flowing work in real time.
3. The Overrun Navigator:What happens when a mob gets too rowdy and drowns out the navigator—especially one who doesn’t yet know what to do? We unpack the difference between “good rowdy” energy and “bad rowdy” imbalance, and how facilitation, structured roles, or even a moment of silence can reset the team.
4. The Strong Opinion Navigator:Is it okay for someone with strong, often-correct opinions to mob effectively? How do we avoid stifling experimentation or learning? We tackle the value of letting experiments speak, coaching with humility, and using dominant voices to model vulnerability instead of control.
5. Mobbing with Documentation and AI:Should the mob read documentation together? What about using AI tools? We cover how teams can mob to teach effective doc reading, search strategies, and prompt engineering, while still adapting workflows to individual learning zones and WIP (Work in Progress) constraints.
💡 This episode is full of insights on:
Group facilitation in real-time coding
Balancing solo and group learning
Creating psychological safety in a mob
Adapting mob rules to context—not dogma
Bringing agile, XP (Extreme Programming), and education together in the mobbing practice
Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/nAAI5f7-vTs 

Football, Trust, and Code: What Retro Bowl Teaches Tech Leaders, Coaches, and Teams​

🏈 Welcome to another episode of the Mob Mentality Show, where we explore the intersection of software development, leadership, and real-world lessons—from the unexpected to the game-changing. This time, we're talking Coaching Credits—as seen in the addictive mobile football game Retro Bowl—and how they map directly to trust, influence, and leadership in software teams.
🎙️ What are Coaching Credits?In Retro Bowl, Coaching Credits represent the respect and trust you’ve earned from players, staff, and fans. They let you upgrade your team, hire top-tier talent, and level up your environment. In software development, we argue Coaching Credits are just as real—earned through Extreme Programming (XP), Mob Programming, Test-Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Delivery (CD), and strong relationship-building.
👶 Austin kicks it off with a story about trying to stay awake helping his wife with their new baby—turning to Retro Bowl as a late-night lifeline. That sparks a deep dive into what the game teaches us about:
Building trust and respect through small wins
The balance between performance and relationships
Using “credits” (influence) wisely inside and outside your team
How to upgrade your environment and talent pool over time
What happens when you try to “spend” influence you don’t actually have
👨‍💻 In Dev Culture Terms:Earn trust by delivering value. Spend it by coaching others, refactoring code, upgrading environments, or influencing org-wide decisions. Just like in Retro Bowl, you can overreach. Think: trying a big move when your trust bank is empty = a bounced check.
📘 We also tie Coaching Credits to Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits—specifically, the idea of an emotional bank account—and reflect on how these lessons align with the origin story of mob programming.
🚨 Key Questions We Explore:
Can you go into Coaching Credit “debt”?
Is quick wins and trust the only way forward when you're starting from zero?
Are you too transactional in how you lead or code?
Should someone build a Software Dev Sim game like Retro Bowl? 😅
💡 If you're a software engineer, tech lead, or engineering manager, this episode offers a fun but surprisingly deep framework for thinking about how trust, respect, and influence shape the way you build products and teams.
Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/ZWgOkphBFNI  

How to Split the Impossible: Slicing Stories When the Dream Is Too Big

🎙️ Ever faced a product vision so massive it felt impossible to start? In this Mob Mentality Show episode, we tackle the art and science of Story Splitting — breaking down huge dreams into small, deliverable slices without losing momentum or clarity.
We explore real-world strategies, including:
Asking the hard questions like Do we really need to release everything at once?
Using SPIDR (Spike, Path, Interface, Data, Rules) to guide story splitting
Implementing Feature Flags (tools to enable/disable features without deploying new code) for flexible delivery
Creating color-coded diagrams to visualize release order and dependencies
Practicing "Yes, and" techniques to manage big customer asks without abandoning Agile values
Running post-mortem retrospectives focused on improving splitting practices
Mapping ideas with Discovery Trees (visual structures for feature evolution)
Handling the tension between Big Bang marketing launches and incremental delivery
Influencing sales and marketing teams to only sell what's already done vs. selling the future
Identifying the impact of poor story splitting on technical debt and customer trust
Differentiating splitting technical work vs. splitting user-facing features
Teaching business stakeholders the fundamentals of CD (Continuous Delivery) and good story practices implicitly vs. explicitly  
Working through known unknowns vs. unknown unknowns in product discovery
Using the Cynefin Framework (a model for navigating complexity) to decide splitting approaches
Prioritizing with cost of delay and story split diagrams to maximize value
This episode is packed with hands-on advice for developers, product managers, Agile coaches, and leaders looking to move fast without breaking things. Whether you're struggling with overwhelming customer requests, complicated roadmaps, or internal misalignment, learning how to split the impossible is key to success in Agile, Continuous Delivery, and Lean Product Development.Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/MjwIkiM25xM 

How Gemba Walks and Mobbing Reveal the Truth About Your Engineering Org with Phil Borlin

🎙️ What’s really happening inside your engineering org?In this episode of the Mob Mentality Show, we sit down with Philip Borlin, Director of Engineering and advocate for lean thinking, mobbing, and team capability building, to uncover how Gemba Walks, smaller batch sizes, and healthy team nudges reveal the actual state of your tech organization—not just what reports say.
We explore how leaders can stop flying blind and start leading based on facts from the field.
🔍 Topics Covered:
✅ Gemba Walks (Japanese term meaning “go to the real place”):
Why your assumptions about how work gets done are probably wrong
How spending even one hour a week in the mob or at the code level changes everything
The myth of managing solely through middle managers
Why high-fidelity information beats filtered reporting
Remote-friendly adaptations: mobbing, Lean coffees, and async insight gathering
✅ Mobbing (also known as ensemble programming):
How mobbing surfaces capability gaps and builds shared understanding
Growing capabilities without enforcing rigid standards
Real stories of capability fire drills, single points of failure, and org fragility
“Low and slow” growth as the only sustainable path to true skill development?
✅ Fixing Batch Size and WIP (Work In Progress):
How large batches lead to delivery waste, delays, and bugs
The surprising power of reducing ticket size to unlock flow
Socratic coaching at stand-ups to improve team work slicing
Giving permission to drop non-priority work and focus only on what matters
✅ Building a Learning Culture:
Why capability resilience > retaining every team member forever
Using “nudges” and peer pressure the right way
Investing in bright spots without ignoring skeptics
Cultivating environments where psychological safety and growth feed off each other
💡 Whether you’re a Director of Engineering, Tech Lead, Agile Coach, or Software Engineer, this episode gives you practical ways to lead with clarity, scale team capability, and build resilience into your org’s DNA.🎧 Subscribe now so you don’t miss the drop:👉 https://www.mobmentalityshow.com/Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/bFMD0AsVDUA  

No Branches?! Ron Cohen Breaks Down Trunk Based Development and Feature Flags (For Real)

What if your team didn’t need branches at all? 💥 In this episode of The Mob Mentality Show, we sit down with Ron Cohen, CTO and co-founder of Bucket, to unpack the real story behind Trunk Based Development (TBD) and the practical use of Feature Flags.
Ron stirred the pot online by challenging common assumptions around TBD — and now he’s here to clear the air.
We talk about:
What Trunk Based Development really means (Hint: It’s not just “no branches”)
Why TBD isn’t just a Git strategy, but a safety mindset often backed by solid practices like Pair Programming, Mob Programming, and TDD (Test-Driven Development)
Gitflow vs. TBD — which one sets your team up to move faster and safer?
The myth that TBD = chaos, and why short-lived branches might still play a role
How mobbing and pairing can make TBD not just possible, but powerful
We also dive deep into Feature Flags (a.k.a. Feature Toggles):
Why Ron became obsessed with them — and how they changed how his teams ship code
How to use toggles for faster releases, safer experiments, and smoother collaboration between devs, Product Owners (POs), and marketing
The difference between feature flags that require a deployment and those that don’t
The value of “dogfooding” your features in production before a full rollout
Why not all toggles are created equal — from simple UI switches to ops-level controls
How to avoid the mess of long-lived toggles and clean up after experiments (Austin, we're looking at you 😅)
Plus:
How flags can power A/B testing and internal beta programs
Fowler’s definition of Feature Flags — and how it is in action
Using toggles to build internal and external trust
Ron’s framework for different kinds of flags in different contexts
Whether you're deep into CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery), trying to tame your branching strategy, or just want to ship smarter — this episode’s packed with insights you can use immediately.
🎧 Subscribe and listen on your favorite platform:👉 https://www.mobmentalityshow.com/
Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/4PZN1yO8l2c  

How Software Prof Ben Kovitz Turned His Class into a Live Coding Mob

What happens when a college software design course ditches traditional lectures and embraces Mob Programming?
In this episode of the Mob Mentality Show, we sit down with Ben Kovitz, a former software developer turned professor at Cal Poly Humboldt, to explore his innovative approach to teaching software design through mobbing.
Topics Covered:
✅ From Industry to Academia: Why Ben left software development to become a professor and how he discovered mob programming.✅ Redefining Software Education: Instead of 30 traditional lectures on software design, Ben’s students learn by doing—designing software while coding.✅ The Power of Mobbing in the Classroom: How students collaborate in the mob of 8, rapidly sharing knowledge and tackling challenges together.✅ Fast Learning vs. Lectures: Why mobbing enables faster knowledge transfer compared to passive lectures.✅ Strong-Style Navigation: How rotations and fast timers helped to stimulate a highly effective learning environment.✅ The Role of the Navigator: How students help each other navigate, learn C++ and the QT framework, and document key lessons from each mob session.✅ Real-World Software Challenges: Simulating legacy code maintenance, evolutionary design, and design patterns like MVC (Model-View-Controller).✅ Overcoming Student Struggles: What happens when students don’t know how to navigate? How asking for help and learning together fosters growth.✅ Teaching Through Experience: Letting students experiment with flawed solutions before introducing better design principles.✅ Assessment & Engagement: How Ben measures student participation, engagement, and learning outcomes in a mobbing environment.
Why This Matters:
Traditional software design education can leave students unprepared for the realities of refactoring real code and collaborative development. By integrating Mob Programming, refactoring techniques, and hands-on problem-solving, Ben Kovitz is equipping the next generation of developers with practical, real-world skills and deeper design insights.📢 Subscribe to the Mob Mentality Show to stay updated on the latest insights in Mob Programming, Extreme Programming (XP), Agile, and collaborative software development!
🎧 Listen on your favorite podcast platform: https://www.mobmentalityshow.com
🔔 Don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more episodes on software development, coding education, and team collaboration!
Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/Rajvp2nrg1A