Ats Pair Programming

Part of AtsGoesExtreme and the AtsDiary.

At this time, we haven't done any PairProgramming on ATS. (We've only been going for four days!) The PairProgrammingFacilities are a little lacking... the desks are designed for the monitor to be pushed back into a corner. There is horizontal desk space, but it's not very deep, which results in the monitor being right in your face, with no room for the keyboard. So far, I've compromized by putting the monitor halfway in the corner, halfway in the horizontal part. Once the team starts actually doing PairProgramming, I imagine we'll settle on something that works.

Initial reactions to the idea of PairProgramming were a little skeptical, but I have a pretty good reputation in this company, so the resistance has been minimal. I keep touting PairProgramming's benefits as a knowledge transfer mechanism, and that's probably been a major factor in its acceptance, since I'm the only one on the project who has detailed knowledge of the existing codebase.

We have encountered one big problem. One of the contractors is going to average a day and a half per week where he can't work at the same time as the other developers. Given short schedule for this project (one iteration to put security in, and then were done) and his lack of experience with the codebase, I'm concerned that he won't be productive during that time. Everybody's discussed this, including the schedule-challenged contractor, and we all agree that, for this project, it's probably best to try to find another contractor to take his place. Good Java developers are hard to find in this part of the world, especially on short notice, so we may not be able to find a replacement. That's not necessarily the end of the world; he seems to be well qualified; there's just scheduling problems.