Increasing Quality with Pair Programming

Abstract: Extreme programming is an agile software development process, which has gained a lot of publicity the last couple of years. It has also brought Pair Programming into new light. Research and experiments have shown that the usage of Pair Programming can increase the quality in software development. People who used Pair Programming are usually satisfied using it and they are also more confident in their solutions. Having a pair colleague is not redundancy, people bring the best out of each other and they produce better solutions. Wages for employees are today heavy costs for companies but quality and time aspects in software development become more and more important. A quantitative survey has been conducted among professionals and students, both with and without Pair Programming experience. People surveyed have very low resistance from the start when using Pair Programming. They actually find benefits from it compared to being singles, but they think it should not be used on every task and at every time. This report investigates if Pair Programming is a technique to increase quality and productivity within software development. We also address business related aspects compared to the usage of Pair Programming as well as management aspects to see if we can find other synergy effects from the use of Pair Programming.