OT? (RE: Pair Programming)

So said  Fuqua, Andrew (ISSAtlanta)  on  12/20/2002 --------------------

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: J. B. Rainsberger [mailto:[email protected]]
>> I certainly couldn't pair eight hours every day. I assumed 
>> that the PP problem was being considered in the context of 
>> not being able to pair even for (say) four hours every day. 
>> An interesting question: how little pairing is too little, in 
>> hours? I'll set the bar at about six.
>
<snip />
>I don't think the bar metaphor is appropriate for reasons I'll explain in
>a moment. But if pressed to set a bar, I'd set it at 2 hours. To me, it's
>not worth sitting down to code if I cannot spend a couple hours. The
>context switching costs (which include the pre-coding design discussions)
>are too high for anything less than that.

If you mean for a single session, then it depends on the task. I would want to spend at least enough time to have half a task complete.

>Back to the bar of "n hours/day spent pairing" being the wrong metaphor: A
>more appropriate measure of commitment is "all production code written in
>pairs" (with some minor exceptions a team can agree to). Some teams and
>individuals have other non-coding duties that may keep them from coding
>for a couple days.

You're correct, but I had assumed that there was 100% commitment to "all production code written in pairs" and that coding is most of what the people had to do these days.

Perhaps my question is this: what is a lower bound on the expected time the team would spend pairing? Too low an average amount of time could indicate a lack of commitment to continuous code review and continuous mentoring.

We can move this to the XP list, if desired.


J. B. Rainsberger,
President, Diaspar Software Services
Let's write software that people understand.
http://www.diasparsoftware.com/
telephone: +1 416 791-8603
All correspondence (c) 2002 Diaspar Software Services.
If you want to use it, just ask; don't steal.




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