Pair programming basics

This resource first appeared in issue #74 on 14 May 2021 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Technical Leadership: Other

Dos and Don’ts of Pair Programming - Study Suggests Togetherness and Expediency for Good Sessions - Bruno Couriol, InfoQ
Two Elements of Pair Programming Skill - Franz Zieris, Lutz Prechelt, arXiv:2102.06460

Couriol has a good summary of the work of Zieris and Prechelt on pair programming. That work, which was accepted to ICSE 2021, looks at two features which they claim determines whether pair programming succeeds as a practice: a combination of “togetherness” (whether the pair can successfully establish and maintain a common mental model of what’s going on during the session) “expediency” (having a healthy focus on the task at hand as well as the longer-term goals of knowledge transfer).

A good summary Couriol’s article on three common failure modes:

The study also identified three pair programming anti-patterns: Getting Lost in the Weeds, Losing the Partner, Drowning the Partner. The first antipattern involves spending time investigating irrelevant details and losing track of what is important. Losing the Partner refers to situations in which one participant focuses on the task at hand and does not pay attention to whether the other participant understands what he is doing. The last anti-pattern is somewhat the opposite behavior: one participant explains too much his thoughts and actions, at the expense of expediency.