We found some interesting benefits coming out of it (besides the ones we expected), like the fact that people find it difficult to “interrupt” two people working, so fewer interrupts and more focus; guys actually had fun collaborating on solving a problem, even doing boring stuff; the combined momentum of the pair was (I thought) greater than the sum of the individuals. Add to that the obvious things like automatic review of code, improved quality and constant refactoring for improvement and I think it’s a winning recipe.

In the end though I think it has to be something the team decides to do, not something dictated to. It’s a mind-shift of note to get used to and unless your heart is in it, there’s no real hope it will succeed.

We have paired development happening, funny thing is that it just sort of happened. To me this shows some good team work, the team self organised the development work, and when found the need teamed up together to tackle a task!