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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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