Learning collaboration and software development with pair programming

摘要: In this paper we describe a qualitative study regarding pair programming in an agile programming team where members initially had little or no knowledge of agile methods and only basic knowledge of object-oriented programming. The whole study is based on a design experiment where we created a training environment for software engineers using an extreme programming project as context. We gathered data regarding the participants’ perceptions of how the project went, and found that pair programming was not a very easy practice for the team members to handle. Using an activity theoretical analysis, we uncovered that although some pair constellations worked well, some of them had problems because of combinations of differing knowledge among pair members, differing objectives in the pair, and unfavorable procedures for assignment of pairs.