Issues and Tactics when Adopting Pair Programming: A Longitudinal Case Study

We present experiences from a two-year study of adopting pair programming (PP) in a Finnish software product company. When adopting PP, the company used five tactics: the creation of simple PP guidelines, the use of a PP champion, making the use of PP voluntary, creating a positive atmosphere for PP, and instituting a separate PP room. By the end of the study the feelings of PP considerably surpassed developers´ preconceptions of PP, and even the feelings of solo programming. Issues identified in the infrastructure for PP were solved through the adoption of the PP room. In the end of the study, a majority of the developers thought that PP should be utilized more than the reached ca. 10% of development effort. Unresolved issues in resourcing PP probably hindered reaching the desired level for the use of PP.