Tag Archives: Pair Programming
Out of the rabbit hole and into the fear
Agile is openness and collaboration, it takes courage and vulnerability and that scares people and we should be mindful of that. My post “The Shame of Pair Programming” is attracting a lot more attention than I’m used to. The comments range from “I feel that too” to comments that I could summarise as, “we just […]
The Shame of Pair Programming
When I tell people that most of my team pair most of the time, and that it’s not mandated, they nod and say “Yes but I don’t think my developers would be happy doing that.” But that’s as far as we go. Why are people reluctant to pair? To pair requires vulnerability. It means sharing […]
Jim and Jo go pairing
Jim has 15 years experience Jo has 2, they are pair programming but neither are very happy. Jim is frustrated with having to explain himself, he is impatient to get the job done. It degenerates into Jim dictating code to Jo. Jo is disheartened and wonders if how he will ever learn to “keep up”. Whilst Jim […]
Technical Debt and Scrum
Scrum really was the tipping point in our attempt to become agile. Taking responsibility for what we deliver increased trust between the team and management. Trust gave us a significant amount of autonomy, and as we all now know it’s self direction that really motivates us. From my point of view as Scrummaster the most important thing […]
Reflections on Remote Pairing Programming
Most people’s idea of working from home is working alone, and I am regularly asked how I put up with what for me would be a miserable existence. I prefer to spend my time with at least one other person, unless like now, my pursuit is purely creative. For me pairing is the perfect way to […]
Day 2 – Up the critical path
Yesterday went well with lots of progress however the team found allocating the tasks a bit tougher this morning. I only stepped in when the Product Owner uttered those dreaded words “He’s on the Critical Path”. How can this be? This is supposed to be Scrum. It seems we had all made an assumption that […]
Day 1 – Points mean prizes
First things first we forgot to prioritise the stories yesterday, at the time it didn’t matter as the whole backlog fitted nicely into a 3 week sprint (Current velocity is 25 points per person per week), but it is important today as we decide which tasks to take on first. A quick text to the […]
Diary of a ScrumMaster 