Re:Promiscuous Pairing: Do it often, do it fast and learn fr...
by adrianhoward on Sunday March 25, 2012 @03:36PM
(#3753546)
Curiously enough my personal best-ever development experience was with exactly the 90m regular pair switching talked about here where we paired the most/least experienced on particular stories.
It was brilliant. Great fun. Energising. Hugely productive. Especially when I was the most experienced person on the pair.
I don't understand Arlo Belshee's emphasis on the lack of flow in this setup in his original paper. Personally I've found the combination of good pairing + TDD to be a recipe for getting into flow very quickly. It seems designed to produce those little nuggets of problem/reward that suck you in and keep you grinding away.
The practice certainly hasn't worked for everybody (check out Mitch Lacey's try at using it for example http://www.mitchlacey.com/resources/adventures-in-promiscuou...) - but having tried it once I would be keen to try it again and try and figure out the contexts that are causing it to work/fail.
It was brilliant. Great fun. Energising. Hugely productive. Especially when I was the most experienced person on the pair.
I don't understand Arlo Belshee's emphasis on the lack of flow in this setup in his original paper. Personally I've found the combination of good pairing + TDD to be a recipe for getting into flow very quickly. It seems designed to produce those little nuggets of problem/reward that suck you in and keep you grinding away.
The practice certainly hasn't worked for everybody (check out Mitch Lacey's try at using it for example http://www.mitchlacey.com/resources/adventures-in-promiscuou...) - but having tried it once I would be keen to try it again and try and figure out the contexts that are causing it to work/fail.