Hi folks,
Have the terms āmob programmingā or āmob testingā become outdated, replaced with ensembling, or are these different terms?
Searching mob testing this wonderful article from 2018 came up - Mob Testing: An Introduction & Experience Report | Ministry of Testing
Personally I still use Mob Testing & Mob Programming. I havenāt heard the term Ensembling just yet here in Belgium and Iām also in a lot of Developer meetups, they also use Mobbing.
I believe they āinventedā ensemble because the word Mob can be an aggressive term. Like an āAngry Mobā but it could also be seen as a Crowd and I think here itās more seen as a crowd then an Angry group. Itās just how you perceive it or want to see it I think.
Even Woody Zuill acknowledged it.
Personally I think āensemblingā sounds stilted and contrived, because who uses a word like that in everyday conversation?
Exactly! Thatās what I was thinking also.
Hi Emily,
We have it on our backlog to add an item to the MoT glossary.
@cassandrahl covers ensemble testing as part of the Software Testing Essentials Certificate (STEC)
Ensemble testing (commonly called āmob testingā) is very similar to pairing in the formal style, but with a larger group of people who act as navigators for a single, rotating driver. Everyone in the ensemble gathers in front of a single computer, quite often projected onto a screen, with only one person operating it at a time. This driver should not make any decisions about what to do. Instead, the group provides ideas and instructions for achieving the goal of the session, which could be to explore a particular feature, or uncover specific types of bugs.
I guess thereās also an argument to say that who uses mobbing in everyday conversation?
I donāt think Iāve ever heard it user in any other context other than in product development/software engineering.
I welcome the change of name to ensemble testing for the reasons Kristof shared, even though it doesnāt feel like a natural every day term as you point out.
Makes me wonder, what other words might only seem to be used in a product development/software engineering context? Perhaps I should start another topic for that as that would be off topic for this particular thread.
I do, we do, all our teams do 
Because itās a common term. I run a lot of meetups and mobbing is pretty common, every meetup there is a mob session in the development communities.
I have a meetup tonight Iāll ask and see what their thought process is about it!
Interesting! Iām going to pay attention to it right now haha.
Because itās a common term. I run a lot of meetups and mobbing is pretty common, every meetup there is a mob session in the development communities.
Thatās cool! Love that youāre running mob sessions at a meetup.
Yet those still feel like they are in the world of dev.
Iām talking about life outside of dev/tech/testing. Mobbing would just sound peculiar.
Hey kids, how was your school mobbing today?
Shall we head to the shop together and do some mobbing to pick up some milk?
Iām visiting my parents this weekend and weāre all going out for a mobbing session.
Imagine that. 
We also use mobbing. Mob testing, Group testing, pair testing.
Never used āensembleā.
Also, this word adds a cognitive load of introducing a new term and then re-explaining to new folks.
Could also be problematic for status report mails / discussions.
I use ensemble every day!
Thatās because I do a lot of musical theatre and we have an āensembleā or chorus of singers and dancers as part of shows 
Our industry is riddled with not well understood terms or terms that differ in meaning between testers and organisations. Think manual testing, end to end, 3Amigos vs. power of three vs. Refinement or what a Cypress Test really means.
Wherever you go, youāll likely have to explain your context of terms anyway.
I have no problem with the word āensembleā. Itās an elegant way of describing an organised group, rather than the chaos and destruction of a āmobā. As to the novelty of it, to me, itās like when we switched from using āguysā to the more inclusive āfolksā. You get used to it very quickly, and it takes very little effort to accommodate others who may be negatively affected by the use of of other terms.
For me it is not just the word thatās important but what it means. Take bug. It could be defect, issues, error etc. and you can have definitions for all of them but deep down it doesnāt matter as they all mean something to fix or improve. And what it means where will be down to context and shared understanding.
I can also throw team testing and swarming into the mix from my experience. But they mean very similar things to the others.