What is Mob Programming?
Mob programming is the whole team working on one problem at one screen: a single driver types (rotating every few minutes), everyone else navigates. Pair programming's logic, taken to the team level — maximum review, maximum knowledge spread, zero handoffs, one thing finished at a time.
Wasteful-looking, selectively brilliant: mobs excel on gnarly design decisions, critical fixes, and onboarding. Nobody mobs the routine ticket queue.
Worked example
A team inherits an undocumented pricing engine no one dares touch. Instead of one brave soul spelunking for a month, the team mobs it for four days: rotating drivers, one shared screen, decisions argued in real time. By Friday the engine is refactored, tested — and understood by six people instead of zero. The bus factor went from "don't ask" to the whole roster.