Are Two Heads Better than One for Software Development? The Productivity Paradox of Pair Programming1
Authors: Balijepally, VenuGopal; Mahapatra, RadhaKanta; Nerur, Sridhar; Price, Kenneth H.
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2009)
DOI: 10.2307/20650280
Extreme programming is currently gaining popularity as an alternate software development methodology. Pair programming, a core practice of this methodology, involves two programmers working collaboratively to develop software. This study examined the efficacy of pair programming by comparing the performance effectiveness and affective responses of collaborating pairs with those of individual programmers treated as nominal pairs. In a controlled laboratory experiment involving student subjects, proxies for entry level programmers working on entry level tasks, two factors were manipulated: programming setting (collaborative pair versus individuals) and programming task complexity (high versus low). Participants who worked in the individual condition were randomly combined into nominal pairs. The performance and affective responses of the collaborating pairs were then compared with those of the best performers and the second best performers of each nominal pair. Results indicated that programming pairs performed at the level above the second best performers and at the level of the best performers in each nominal pair. This relationship was found to be consistent across both levels of…