Collaboration: At the Extremities of Extreme
Jason Ayers share the observations he made watching a team of developers collaborating in real time on the same code base, pushing XP, pair programming and continuous integration to their extremes.
Jason Ayers share the observations he made watching a team of developers collaborating in real time on the same code base, pushing XP, pair programming and continuous integration to their extremes.
Pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. The benefits of pair programming are well known and the technique is widely practiced. However, what is the best way to sit while pairing?
Stuart Wray wrote a paper analysing how pair programming actually works in team environments and identifies four mechanisms that can be applied to improve the effectiveness of pair programming, and why it results in better quality products.

Jay Fields takes a look at pair programming from an adoption perspective. This article is for you if you already know what pair programming is and guidance on how to get to the point of successfully practicing pair programming. Jay goes over everything from an optimal seating arrangement, to effective coaching techniques, to calling out common mistakes to avoid.

Agile adoption often proves challenging. Participants at a recent OpenSpace event focused on the dynamics of adoption rather than the structure that results from adoption. The resulting patterns are part of an effort to compile Agile adoption patterns answering: "What specific practices should I adopt?", "How can I adopt incrementally?" and "Where can I expect pitfalls?"
Jason Gorman presents how developers can learn TDD to the point of transforming the knowledge acquired into habits by exercising a number of practices over a period of 4-6 months followed by evaluation done by fellow co-workers.

Glenn Saqui and Jon Mullen present the details of the development environment and the process they are using at Sky.com: selecting team members, work area, dealing with continuous integration, tools, how they pair, weekly and daily process, story cards and how they are used, and the production environment.

InfoQ sits down with Andrew Hunt, one of the original Agile Manifesto signatories, to discuss how Agile has diverged from the original vision and how pragmatic programming has evolved. Andy discusses CoffesScript, Arduino, and HTML5 and he shares his views on the effectiveness of pair programming, Agile testing methods and other practices.
Laurie Williams, who heads the Software Engineering Research group at North Carolina State University, discusses her research into Agile principles and practices. Williams also talks about Comparative Agility, which is a tool to show teams where they stand in terms of the adoption of Agile practices. Comparative Agility was launched in 2007 and since that time over 400 people have used it.