For a more low-tech solution, I've found cssh / csshX ("Cluster SSH") quite the timesaver. It pops up a bunch of xterms/Terminal.app windows and lets you type in one window while sending the keystrokes to all of the ssh sessions simultaneously.
This is why Ansible modules (and most other config tools) instead describe the desired end state, and perform the commands needed to get you to those states.
Basically all config tools arose out of a need for solutions to replace parallel scripting with something more robust that accounted for potential variance between systems, and also to make things more push-button.
The hosts/inventory in ansible as a source of truth for your infrastructure is also a nice feature. You could use a selection from your ansible inventory to open a cssh with 'top' running on all your webservers, for example.