Chris Johnston

Martin Fowler has written an excellent article on his bliki about “pair programming misconceptions”:http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PairProgrammingMisconceptions.html. In it he tries to dispel some of the more talked about myths and misconceptions about pair programming. These include things like:

* Pair programming halves the productivity of developers
* You have to do pair programming if you are doing an Agile process
* It’s only worth pairing on complex code, rote code yields no advantage.

Probably the most interesting statement in the article is:

bq. I should also point out that to most XPers I know the question of whether a team is XP or not is uninteresting; the real issue is whether a team is effective.

This statement is inline with another entry that Fowler wrote entitled “Agile Imposition”:http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AgileImposition.html about people, management or consultants, imposing Agile practices on a team.

bq. Drifting around the web I’ve heard a few comments about agile methods being imposed on a development team by upper management. Imposing a process on a team is completely opposed to the principles of agile software, and has been since its inception.

Both articles are worth reading and stand as a counterpoint to much of the debates about Agile that I read on the internet.