Pair Programming: Yer doin it wrong

John Boal — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:08:18 GMT

This is a pair programming workstation at an undisclosed office near me... it has never been used. Note that there are no chairs... <sigh>

The mere fact that it exists at all does give me hope however. Agile here is not dead, only frozen in carbonite...

This station also sits in a shared workspace that is always empty. It's so sad when there really is a better way but nobody wants to use it.

If there were only two chairs here, with two programmers working together, then, "yer doin it RIGHT." If there were three more of these workstations with six other team members in this shared space, perhaps working with a couple of whiteboards and a cork board with story cards on it, then THAT'S where I want to be.

This station with its dual monitors, keyboards, and mice is the ideal pairing workstation. Both monitors have the same image (clone mode), and both keyboards and mice are active at the same time. The only complaint I would lodge here is that the workstation is so underpowered it really couldn't be used for development. The pair would have to use remote desktop to get to a development machine. Perhaps that is the actual design, however having the local machine there I think is much better.

Bits 'n Widgets - Pair Programming

Pair Programming: Yer doin it wrong