Situated Geekery » Blog Archive » How TDD and Pairing Increase Production
http://anarchycreek.com/2009/05/26/how-tdd-and-pairing-increase-production/

I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like some of these folks try too hard to soft-sell the excellent way presented by test-driven development (TDD) and pair programming (PP). A lot of alleged agilists make this argument: you see, by PP’ing and TDDing, you will greatly increase your quality, so even though your productivity goes down, you get the coolest glow by knowing in your heart of hearts that you are a good citizen of the coding world. I call bullshit. Not only is it not true that you can trade internal quality for more features, it’s actually the exact opposite case: the more productivity you seek, the higher you should raise your standard of internal quality. That’s right, that’s what GeePaw says. If you want more production, look first to raising your internal quality. So, how can such things be? 1. Because internal quality and external quality are not the same things. 2. Because the biggest single determinant in today’s production is the quality of yesterday’s product

Towards a Way of Excellence

Sometimes I feel like some of these folks try too hard to soft-sell the excellent way presented by test-driven development (TDD) and pair programming (PP). A lot of alleged agilists make this argument: you see, by PP’ing and TDDing, you will greatly increase your quality, so even though your productivity goes down, you get the coolest glow by knowing in your heart of hearts that you are a good citizen of the coding world. I call bullshit.

Elliotte Rusty Harold's perspective on six reasons that he believes pair programming succeeds: 1) Continuous code review, 2) Fewer blockages, 3) Masking distractions, 4) Guaranteed focus, 5) Multiple points of view, and 6) Reduced training cost and time.

Pair programming is like magic in more ways than one. It dramatically improves programmer productivity and reduces bug count, and yet it does so through a technique that’s completely counter-intuitive.

1. Continuous Code Review; 2. Fewer blockages; 3; Masking distractions; 4. Guaranteed focus; 5. Multiple points of view; 6.Reduced training cost and time

erview week rotating on actual production code, pairing with the same people they'll be working with if they're hired. Everyone gets a say in whether to hire a new recruit, and hesitance from a developer that actually paired with them means they do not get hired.

People often ask how can I justify two people when one will do. Will this not, just double my cost? To answer this question I think it is important to discuss what pair-programing is not.

At the simplest level pairing is helping people one-on-one, not through emails, let me show you behind a keyboard, instead of telling you in abstract. The amount of pairing and keeping each other on track depends on many things, but you will find that more you pair the more you will learn from each other and the better the code becomes.

Must show this to a few people.

I sacrificed my productivity to make Arthur productive in a single day. If I did not it would take Arthur weeks before he would figure out how to set everything up how things worked and enough courage to fix a bug. Yet that is exactly what most companies do. Think about the confidence Arthur had on day one working with us. He was up and ready and he fixed two bugs on day one.

We used this pretty effectively at Reevoo, and I'm sure I'll use it again.