I've always been intrigued by pair programming, but in 12 years development I've never worked in a place they have employed this practice, so I have always been sceptical as to how people see it.I wonder whether this is because of money/time (Pointy haired boss spotting two people at one computer working on the same code!!!! how dare they!) or for other reasons?
How common is pair programming in the workplace?
development process;pair programming
I've had the same gig for 15 years and we've recently (last 12-18 months) starting adopting Agile techniques. Where pair programming is used, the result story/feature has been implemented on time w/ less defects. I still don't think it's been employed often enough though.Prior to our Agile adoption one other developer and I have shared the keyboard from time to time over the years infrequently (maybe once every 3-4 months). Our management team appeared reluctant but was always satisfied w/ our informal pairing as it typically accomplished a few of the following:reduced silos on the team (huge win when the team is 6-8 devs)produced code with less defectseach dev typically picked up skills from itI would say management is reluctant but if you can take baby steps and demonstrate that the feature is better afterward (cost savings) and/or each (or one) dev picked up some skills (paying it forward), you can pick up steam if you find it a practice that suits you or your team.