Wow! I couldn't have said it better myself. Having worked across a variety of codebases and teams over the last 10+ years, it has become obvious to me that delivering software is an inherently social activity (at least the delivery of valuable software)
IMHO, the reason we've seen the rise of XP, Behaviour-driven Design (BDD) and DevOps is that each part of the software delivery community is gradually coming to this conclusion within their own realm
Mobbing for me just makes sense on so many level, especially from the point of view of adding 'expertise' to a problem/solution:
Not sure on how to integrate the latest language feature into your code - bring someone with experience into the mob...
Not sure how this feature could be tested - bring a QA/tester into the mob...
Not sure of the infrastructure requirements of this new database - bring an operator into the mob...
In my experience working as a consultant across multiple organisations, not enough people have been doing this.
As for a putting a name on it - a name can help spread the idea (ubiquitous language and all that), but it can lead to abuse and cargo-culting.
I believe a label is often helpful during the 'innovation' and 'early adoption' diffusion of innovation phase, and this is firmly where mobbing is at the moment
IMHO, the reason we've seen the rise of XP, Behaviour-driven Design (BDD) and DevOps is that each part of the software delivery community is gradually coming to this conclusion within their own realm
Mobbing for me just makes sense on so many level, especially from the point of view of adding 'expertise' to a problem/solution:
Not sure on how to integrate the latest language feature into your code - bring someone with experience into the mob...
Not sure how this feature could be tested - bring a QA/tester into the mob...
Not sure of the infrastructure requirements of this new database - bring an operator into the mob...