Q1 reply:
There’s a very nice article on mobbing for introverts that might answer some of your question by an introvert, Aaron Griffin who has now years of experience showing up into a mob on a daily basis. My discussions with him has lead me to realize that while it can be really draining at first, there’s a significant upside. Introverts often feel their ideas don’t get heard, and a considerate established mob can turn that experience around. Also, stepping out of rotation and reflecting, and even stepping out completely when you feel you need to recharge is encouraged. The work does not stop for one person leaving the mob. But Aaron has a lot more to say: https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/experience-reports/mob-programming-for-the-introverted/
Q2 reply
I work with teams in a product company, and in my current place of work getting people to mob (even pair) is extremely difficult. There’s strong ideas of how they learn best and that involving others in any way isn’t their thing. Forcing people isn’t my thing. But some groups volunteer to try things out, usually the ones that are no so established, over team limits. We have tens of teams here, and I work directly with many.
I’ve seen mobbing in use in contracting environments too, but for learning often it requires the idea of “we don’t invoice for these hours”. Some teams do their contracting work in a mob, with enlightened customers willing to pay as they see the deliveries being faster and more to the point. The main obstacle is always people. Not just customers and managers, but also the developers and testers. They “know” this won’t work without ever trying it and surely it does not work when you don’t do it.
I’m getting better at convincing managers. Developers still give me hard time. So I use other developers who have stuff to teach as my minions in taking this forward. For example, Llewellyn Falco is a developer who commands a lot of respect from other developers. Bringing him in to mob with us makes people show up to learn from him.
I have also a side job of consulting, although I do that very little. I do most of my teaching nowadays in mob format. So I show up at companies doing a two hour session with them. When we test together and they find problems on their own applications they were completely blind to, it changes things. I spent a day mobbing with a team I was considering joining (I did not - decided that they had much to learn from me and I had less to gain with that choice at that time) and we broke their “working” system in ways they never thought, and I could do this with them on day 1 without ever having seen or used their application (energy invoicing) before.
So, just get some group together and test together. Talk about what you learned and what you contributed. Celebrate both to enforce trying again.