--- title: "How Do You Explain Pair Programming?" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/3/how-do-you-explain-pair-programming.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/3/how-do-you-explain-pair-programming.html" published: "2005-04-03T23:08:00" updated: "2005-04-03T23:08:00" tags: ["Agile Related"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Here's something to put on my slides for the next executive briefing I'll talk at. It's about the benefits of pair programming and it's only a part of a whole list of benefits found when doing Pair Programming . It was…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # How Do You Explain Pair Programming? By Roy Osherove April 3, 2005 In [Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related) **Historical article** · Originally published April 3, 2005; technical details may be outdated. Here's something to put on my slides for the next executive briefing I'll talk at. It's about the benefits of pair programming and it's only a part [of a whole list of benefits found when doing Pair Programming](http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PairProgrammingBenefits). It was mentioned as a comment to [a question by Johanna Rothman on her blog](http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/archive/2005_03_01_mpdarchive.html#111186986596472768), looking for ways to explain Pair Programming to management. "1. Projects with high quality (attention to quality) have lower schedule pressure: - Products with the lowest defect counts have the shortest schedules (Jones 1991, Applied Software Measurement). - Poor quality is the most common reasons for schedule overruns (Jones 1994, 4000 projects, Assessment and Control of Software Risks). 2\. Higher quality comes through culture/values/process, inspection, testing, early feedback, refactoring, and so forth. 3. Regarding inspection and quality and schedule, inspection is a powerful tool: - Inspections have been found to produce net schedule savings of 10 to 30 percent (Gilb and Graham 1993, Software Inspection). - Each hour spent on inspections avoided an average of 33 hours of maintenance (Russell 1991, IEEE Software). - Inspections were up to 20 times more efficient than testing (Russell 1991, IEEE Software). 4\. [PairProgramming](http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PairProgramming), in part, is a way to do effective, real-time, responsive inspection, which supports higher quality, which supports reduced schedule pressure. _\--_ [_CraigLarman_](http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?CraigLarman) _"_ Personally, I make all the people who take my classes do the exercises in Pairs. First of all, they learn much faster than they would solo. Second, it makes it easy for me to spend more time with each pair as they learn together, which means more quality time during exercises (which make up about 70% of course time when I teach Test Driven Development). Pairs work better. When they can work together, that is. ## Lessons on this topic - [Understanding the Problem](https://courses.osherove.com/courses/tdd-pairing-sessions-building-a-go-game/understanding-the-problem/) · TDD Pairing Sessions - Building a Go Game - [Test Driving a String Calculator](https://courses.osherove.com/courses/the-art-of-unit-testing-and-tdd-master-class-in-net/test-driving-a-string-calculator/) · The Art of Unit Testing & TDD Master Class in .NET - [Introducing TDD](https://courses.osherove.com/courses/the-art-of-unit-testing-and-tdd-in-java/introducing-tdd/) · The Art of Unit Testing and TDD in Java - [Introduction to Unit Testing Ideas](https://courses.osherove.com/courses/the-art-of-unit-testing-and-tdd-in-java/introduction-to-unit-testing-ideas/) · The Art of Unit Testing and TDD in Java - [Isolation (Mocking) Frameworks](https://courses.osherove.com/courses/the-art-of-unit-testing-and-tdd-in-java/isolation-mocking-frameworks/) · The Art of Unit Testing and TDD in Java ## More in Agile Related [All posts in Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related) - Apr 5, 2005 ### [Tests should reflect required reality](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/5/tests-should-reflect-required-reality.html) - Apr 3, 2005 ### [Scrum at Microsoft](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/3/scrum-at-microsoft.html) - Apr 3, 2005 ### [Migrating Nunit 1.0 to 2.2.2 - step by step walkthrough](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/3/migrating-nunit-10-to-222-step-by-step-walkthrough.html) - Apr 3, 2005 ### [When should you remove or change a unit test?](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/4/3/when-should-you-remove-or-change-a-unit-test.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/