Re: Any advice on remote pairing?

Larry, 

Thanks for the feedback. 

I read a book called 'Building Successful Online Communities', which is a pretty good book (heavily academic). I knew I was treading on new territory, but I didn't know how new when asking this question.

I think the hardest part of setting remote XP (or XP in general) is getting the coders to learn to work together as a team. This is especially difficult when the pairings live in remote places. My first goal in hiring them wasn't there technical skills but their social skills. There's a certain personality that works best.

This will be new to the coders and my role will be to be the mentor. I'll be the one who has regular daily contact with each them (e.g. stand up) and meet with them as a group for a video chat 2x in the week. To begin, I'm going to ask one to be the driver and the other the navigator, where the navigator is in charge of helping me create the systems where pairing and shared ownership can work.

It will be a difficult birthing process, but where there is a will there is a way. They see the benefits in the contracts that I give them, even if they don't immediately see the benefits in this crazy pairing idea I insist on. In my mind, this is the only way I know to ensure better quality. If I could have them keep their Skype videos on for 15 minutes a day for each other, I'd call it a victory. But bandwidth may be an issue for them.

My pairing will have one person coding and the other person testing. Hopefully this division will create sharing and collaboration.

Thanks again.