Productivity of Pair Programming in a Distributed Environment – Results from Two Controlled Case Studies

Abstract

Several methods and techniques have surfaced to address the ongoing concerns of quality and productivity of software development. Among these is the Pair Programming (PP) method, which has gained a lot off attention through being an essential part of an agile software development methodology called the eXtreme Programming (XP). In this paper, we present the results of two controlled case studies that investigate the possible productivity improvement through the incorporation of PP over solo programming. The main focus is on implementation task, more specifically in programming, although PP is suitable for other tasks too. Our results show that very high level of PP use might be difficult to achieve in a very tightly scheduled software development project, but some of the benefits can be seen to come true even with proportional use of PP. In our case, PP added the additional effort of 13% over solo programming.