(I was part of the group described in the article)
You are absolutely right. We also don't want to work like this all the time.
As always this is a tool which is suited for specific circumstances. We found it really helpful for implementing things that need a lot of discussions or for distributing knowledge. These are instances where you need a lot of time talking with your team anyways so the mob is a combination of implementation and the separate discussion, reviews or knowledge transfers that you do regardless.
Opposed to this, the mob is absolute overkill, if you write boilerplate or uncontroversial code the whole time. Also in situation where nobody has knowledge and all members of the mob are struggling to continue it might be better to quit and choose one or two scouts to gather knowledge before continuing.
You are absolutely right. We also don't want to work like this all the time.
As always this is a tool which is suited for specific circumstances. We found it really helpful for implementing things that need a lot of discussions or for distributing knowledge. These are instances where you need a lot of time talking with your team anyways so the mob is a combination of implementation and the separate discussion, reviews or knowledge transfers that you do regardless.
Opposed to this, the mob is absolute overkill, if you write boilerplate or uncontroversial code the whole time. Also in situation where nobody has knowledge and all members of the mob are struggling to continue it might be better to quit and choose one or two scouts to gather knowledge before continuing.