Perceived Effects of Pair Programming in an Industrial Context

Vanhanen, Jari; Lassenius, Casper

doi:10.1109/euromicro.2007.47

Cited by 29 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…PP has been described by some as an exhausting practice [41,37]. While [41] ascribes this to developers focusing more on the task due to the pair pressure, our research shows that the effort of verbalization and explanation could be another reason why PP is more tiring than solo programming .…”

Section: Expert Challengesmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…Several benefits of PP have been claimed including improved understandability and maintainability of code and design [35,37], decreased defect rates [24,18,23,10,25] and knowledge transfer [21,20,23,32,34,35,36,38,40]. This paper focuses on knowledge transfer in PP.…”

Section: *Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that PP reduced the mentoring needed per day from 37% of a developer's time to 26% of their time, and that PP reduced the time for a developer to be independently productive from 27 to 12 days . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 The developers' view of combining different knowledge levels when pairing was investigated by Jensen [18] and Vanhanen et al [38,37]. Jensen [18] found that pairing developers with similar expertise was counter-productive, while Vanhanen and Lassanius [37] found two good partner combinations: when the pair consists of a senior and a junior developer; or partners have complementary knowledge.…”

Section: Knowledge Transfer In Pair Programmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Knowledge transfer in pair programming: An in-depth analysis

Plonka

Sharp

Linden

et al. 2015

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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Whilst knowledge transfer is one of the most widely-claimed benefits of pair programming, little is known about how knowledge transfer is achieved in this setting. This is particularly pertinent for novice−expert constellations, but knowledge transfer takes place to some degree in all constellations.We ask "what does it take to be a good "expert" and how can a "novice" best learn from a more experienced developer?". An in-depth investigation of video and audio excerpts of professional pair programming sessions using Interaction Analysis reveals: six teaching strategies, ranging from "giving direct instructions" to "subtle hints";; and challenges and benefits for both partners. These strategies are instantiations of some but not all teaching methods promoted in cognitive apprenticeship; novice articulation, reflection and exploration are not seen in the data. The context of pair programming influences the strategies, challenges and benefits, in particular the roles of driver and navigator and agile prioritisation which considers business value rather than educational progression. Utilising these strategies more widely and recognizing the challenges and benefits for both partners will help developers to maximise the benefits from pairing sessions. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 1 Introduction "Two heads are better than one" is a common idiom referring to the advantages of collaborative work. *ManuscriptThe value of collaboration is explicitly encouraged in software development through a practice known as pair programming. Pair programming (PP) is a software development technique where two developers work closely together to solve a development problem [41,1].Several benefits of PP have been claimed including improved understandability and maintainability of code and design [35,37], decreased defect rates [24,18,23,10,25] and knowledge transfer [21,20,23,32,34,35,36,38,40]. This paper focuses on knowledge transfer in PP. This is common when a more experienced developer teaches a less experienced developer, for example, to bring new staff up to speed [3,42]. However, given that developers never have identical knowledge, a certain degree of knowledge transfer would be expected within every PP constellation.Pairing with someone who has a different knowledge level can be problematic [2,7] and developers tend to interact differently in this situation in comparison to pairing with other developers with similar knowledge levels [9,7]. For example, Plonka et al. [29] showed that less knowledgeable developers (novices) can disengage in PP sessions and can sometimes not follow their more knowledgeable partner (expert). These three questions are addressed through a qualitative analysis (using Interaction Analysis [19]) of video recordings of professional developers working together on their day to day t...

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Section: Expert Challengesmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: *Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Knowledge Transfer In Pair Programmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Knowledge transfer in pair programming: An in-depth analysis

Plonka

Sharp

Linden

et al. 2015

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

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“…PP has been successfully applied in industry [2] [23] aiming to increase software quality, foster team collaboration, introduce junior developers in a development team [19], and many other contexts [10]. There are some investigation of pair programming in academic context.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Systems Development with Pair Programming: An Academic Quasi-Experiment

Fernandes¹,

Ferreira²,

Netto³

et al. 2016

Anais Do Simpósio Brasileiro De Sistemas De Informação (SBSI)

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Pair Programming is a development technique in which two programmers collaborate to conduct the same development task. The use of this technique in information systems development may support many activities, such as code inspection and software integration. Studies have investigated the advantages and drawbacks of pair programming in both industrial and academic context. However, with respect to academic research, the majority of studies investigate this technique in European or North American educational institutions. Considering that some social and geographic factors may impact on the application and efficiency of agile methods such as pair programming, we lack an evaluation of this programming practice in the context of Brazilian students. In this paper, we discuss the findings of three one-hour quasi-experiments conducted with 55 undergraduate and graduate students to assess pair programming in the development of tasks to implement an information system. These participants are students enrolled in Information Systems and related courses of two Brazilian institutions. For the experiment, we divided each class in two groups: one group for solo programming and the other for pair programming. As a result, we observed that participants developing tasks in pairs presented lower rates of time spent and difficulty faced to complete development tasks when compared with solo programming participants. However, we did not observe a significant increase on the correctness in tasks developed by both experiment groups: paired and solo programmers. Finally, we conducted an analysis of participant feedback regarding other advantages of using pair programming in systems development.

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“…Over recent years, a wide range of studies [3,13,15,16,18] has investigated PP; most of those studies report positive results indicating benefits of PP. However, some studies are inconclusive and some studies even report contradictory results (see [10]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaboration in Pair Programming: Driving and Switching

Plonka

Segal

Sharp

et al. 2011

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Abstract. This paper reports on an empirical study about the mechanisms of the collaboration of drivers and navigators in Pair Programming (PP) sessions. Based on video recordings of professional software developers, we analysed the mechanisms of role switches and how developers split the task of driving. We found that developers do not evenly contribute to the task of driving and that they spend on average a third of the session without any computer interaction focusing mainly on communication. In addition, our results show that most pairs switch roles frequently and that the frequency and fluidity of switches indicate a high level of engagement on the part of both developers.

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Perceived Effects of Pair Programming in an Industrial Context

Abstract: We studied the perceived effects of pair programming (PP)

Cited by 29 publications

References 22 publications

Knowledge transfer in pair programming: An in-depth analysis

Knowledge transfer in pair programming: An in-depth analysis

Information Systems Development with Pair Programming: An Academic Quasi-Experiment

Collaboration in Pair Programming: Driving and Switching

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