Being Agile developer, have tried & tested various flavors of pair programming over the years while working in highly motivated self-managed team. Some experiments worked while some worked better :) This presentation is about sharing the personal experience of practicing promiscuous pairing which allowed the team to be always in the beginner's mind state and being able to push the boundaries consistently.

1. Promiscuous Pairing
Yes It Works!
-Ankur Sambhar

2. What is
Promiscuous
Pairing?

3. switching pairs very
frequently

4. optimize learning and
spread of knowledge

5. preventing state of flow

6. What is “Beginner’s Mind”?

7. …state of few limits

8. tries more approaches
tries them rapidly

9. transitory state that
depends on instability

10. to maintain it as a
stable state?

11. Change things
around frequently

12. What worked for us?

13. fine granular tasks…
each < 3 hrs

14. tasks pulled by
least qualified
team members

15. pair switching
every 60 mins

16. pair rotation
every 12 mins

17. code check-in
every 12 mins

18. Challenges we faced

19. team composition
junior – master developers

20. odd number of
team members

21. how frequently
rotate pairs?
10
mins?
25
mins?
60
mins?

22. finding optimum
pair switching frequency
30
mins?
60
mins?
120
mins?

23. What have we achieved
with it?

24. quick knowledge sharing
across team
on each task

25. no local optimization

26. better quality deliverables

27. improved throughput of
team

28. shorter ramp-up time for
new hires

29. It pays to be
promiscuous!
keep pairing…
As they say…

30. Questions
& Answers?