A Field Study of Developer Pairs: Productivity Impacts and Implications by Allen Parrish, Randy Smith, David Hale, and Joanne Hale
Published in IEEE Software, September/October 2004
The authors build from a previous study of programmer productivity as team size increases, where they had concluded that increased concurrent work on core modules leads to decreased productivity. They reconsider their data for concurrent working pairs in response to positive findings from pair programming. The authors conclude that the role-based coordination protocol associated with agile software methodologies overcomes a significant productivity loss otherwise associated with concurrent software development pairs. A good article with some pertinent points raised. The data from the field study supports an interpretation which says that concurrent work on a module reduces productivity. The metric used for this data set does not provide definitive results as the type of collaboration for the concurrent work is not available (i.e. developers could have been in different offices, not in communication, etc.), but the authors propose interesting avenues for further investigation based on this finding.
Reviewed for the Agile Alliance
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