Pair Programming with Caimito One Team

Pair Programming is a powerful Agile practice that leads to higher quality production code and distributes more knowledge amongst team members than anything else. In Pair Programming there is usually a driver and a navigator. In the classic scenario the driver operates mouse and keyboard writing the code while the navigator contributes ideas, takes notes so that nothing can slip through the cracks, helps to identify test cases and other things. Caimito One Team allows developers to pair with each other when they start progress on an issue. Everybody else on the team can see who is pairing with whom.

Caimito One Team is a tool that supports geographically distributed teams besides being useful for co-located teams. The inability to see each other daily can be a challenge easily may lead to the ugly out of sight out of mind syndrome. We believe that seeing your fellow team member's faces is important and so display the profile images for story owner, driver and navigator:

When starting progress on an issue a simple dialog appears that lets you choose with whom you want to pair. The person starting progress on an issue automatically becomes the driver and she gets to choose her navigator:

Everybody else on the team can see items that are being worked on in pairs with two faces displayed instead of just one:

How pairs can work over the distance

Classic Pair Programming with co-located teams requires nothing more than a wide desk and a large monitor. The keyboard and mouse can be moved easily between the two programmers to switch roles during pairing. By sitting closely together verbal communication and sharing notes on a sheet of paper is as easy as it can be.

Pairing for distributed teams is considered a mission impossible by many. Here are a few ideas how to make it work despite the challenges:

XPairtise - Distributed Pair Programming plug-in for Eclipse. This tool connects two Eclipse IDEs over the network and allows the two programmers to see what the other is doing. It has a built-in chat but one would probably like to use a headset and a voice communication solution like Skype.

Pair a programmer and a tester - It doesn't have to be two programmers who pair. The tester might be the perfect navigator, as he has usually a slightly different mindset than a programmer and if involved from the early requirements gathering and conversations with the customer, he may act as some kind of customer proxy for the pair. In that case it seems to make sense to let the programmer code a bit on his own, submit it to version control and let the tester take over. After a while the tester has found a few things and communicates them to the programmer. In that scenario the two work together but not for an entire workday. Caimito One Team's pair programming support helps them to keep the ends tied together and share information with each other and the rest of the team.