Pairing Stairs

• Posted by dan on September 12, 2011
• 0 comments

I've talked before about how we use pair programming at work. One of the issues we encountered in my previous post on pair programming was pair rotation.

For some reason we naturally, tend to sit in the same pairs story after story. The problem arises when one member of a pair suddenly falls ill, or worse both fall ill. We obviously want to be able to still progress the story, so regular pair rotation seems like a good idea.

Improving pair rotation seemed to be a struggle for us. It seemed to be a regular item to improve in our retrospectives. Eventually we stole the idea of pair stairs from another team (Thanks Enzo). We've not been doing it long, but so far so good, I'd encourage you to try it out if you face a similar situation.

Pair Rotation

Here's a video that talks about pair rotation

References

• Pairing Staircase