Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

6-2013

Abstract

Pair programming is a key characteristic of the Extreme Programming (XP) method. Through a controlled experiment we investigate pair programming behaviour of programmers without prior experience in XP. The factors investigated are: (a) characteristics of pair programming that are less favored (b) perceptions of team effectiveness and how they relate to product quality, and (c) whether it is better to train a pair by giving routine tasks first or by giving complex tasks first. Our results show that: (a) the least liked aspects of pair programming were having to share the screen, keyboard and mouse, and having to switch between the roles of driver and navigator (b) programmers solved complex problems more effectively in pairs compared to routine problems, however, perceptions of team effectiveness was higher when solving routine problems than when solving complex problems and (c) programmers who started pair programming with routine tasks and moved on to complex tasks were more effective than those who started with complex ones and moved on to routine ones. We discuss how these results will assist the industry in inducting programmers without prior pair-programming experience into XP process environments.

Keywords

Software process, Agile methods, Controlled experiment, Empirical software engineering, Extreme programming, Pair programming

Discipline

Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 14th International Conference, XP 2013, Vienna, Austria, June 3-7: Proceedings

Volume

149

First Page

31

Last Page

45

ISBN

9783642383137

Identifier

10.1007/978-3-642-38314-4_3

Publisher

Springer

City or Country

Cham

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38314-4_3

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