Applying the Pair Protocol beyond Programming

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Pairing isn't just for programming, it can be advantageous to have two people pairing on any type of work. Have you ever had to pair up with someone on a piece of work?  Have you ever launched into the work only to realize that you haven't discussed how to pair up or realized that you aren’t really working well together? There are dozens of different ways to work as a pair so it is important to have protocol on how to work together through a piece of work.  I call this the Pair Protocol.  This is a guideline on how two (or more) people engage together in a piece of work to have the maximum alignment and productivity. The objective is to get two people to work as one. 

Setting the stage 

You need a piece of work, team of people, and the right pairing mindset. The piece of work can be a feature, a user story, a requirement, an increment, or similar that has been refined so the work ahead is clear.  This forms the basis for what you pair around.  You need people who are coming together for a common purpose, know the context around the work, and are willing to work together.  You also need a mindset of “we” and “us” over “I” and “me” as pairing implies that all collaborators of the work in harmony and get the credit together.   

Pairing up 

The first step is for two people to volunteer to do the work together.  This implies each person is ready, willing, and able to do the work. It also means they can self-organize around the work (e.g., to have the option to volunteer for the work and have the ownership to determine how to do the work).  This typically occurs in a session where the work has been discussed and it's time for people to volunteer to do the work. This could be in a form of a planning session (e.g., for Scrum it would be Sprint Planning, for Kanban it would be the Queue Replenishment, and in traditional approaches, it would be a project planning session. The outcome is that two people (aka, the pair) have willingly volunteered for a piece of work.

Working together

Once the pair has been created and the planning is done, the first step of beginning the work is aligning on how the pair will work together. The pair will briefly meet to re-familiarize themselves of the work (e.g., discuss the “why”, acceptance criteria, etc.) and then discuss how they will navigate through the piece of work (e.g., through task decomposition). This includes an agreement and commitment on who will do which tasks, how they will do the tasks, and when they will do the tasks. As this is pairing, there may be tasks where the pair works together. If so, discuss and gain agreement on how this will occur (e.g., working session, etc.).

Capturing Discussion

As you pair through the sprint, increment, or time period, you should capture important conversions and decisions where the work definition (e.g., user story, etc.) is recorded. There may be ‘discussion’ functionality that can be used that allows the pair to remind themselves of the discussion. 

Incorporating Feedback 

It is important to agree on how you will notify each other when a task is complete and what types of feedback loops you will use with each other and with those outside the pair to gain feedback to ensure the work is moving in the direction of value. There should be an agreement on what feedback loops will be used (e.g., review sessions, etc.) and how will feedback be incorporated back into the work. This information can be recorded in the work definition (e.g., user story details, etc.). If the planning or backlog management tool has a “follow” feature, then activating this will help keep each other aligned with the progress.     

Sharing Results

As the work comes to a conclusion, there needs to be a way to agree that it is completed and meet the acceptance criteria. This should occur prior to sharing the results with the greater team or those outside the pair. Sharing results include identifying the venue where the outcome of the work can be shared and discussed. If you are using Agile or Scrum, the Sprint Review or demo can provide the venue for sharing the work and gaining any additional feedback. The pair should also discuss who would demo the work, collaborate on what type of feedback they are looking for during the demo, then jointly agree on whether they’ve met the acceptance criteria of the work, and what are the next steps (if any). 

Exploring Five Pair Programming Techniques

A collaboration by Antonio González Sanchis and Mario Moreira

Extreme Programming (XP) introduced a programming technique that’s been famous since its early days: pair programming. It sounds simple, two people working together with the same computer. However, what people don’t know is that there are many ways in which you can approach this technique. Let’s explore a few:

Driver-navigator: This is the best known style of pairing. It consists of one person ‘driving’, taking the keyboard and coding or doing the work, while the other one is ‘navigating’. The Navigator’s job is to pay attention to the work being done by the driver while keeping the big picture in mind.  They should guide the driver in the right direction. It is very important that driver explains every decision they make, otherwise the navigator might lose interest and may stop paying attention. It’s healthy to switch roles every now and then.

Ping-Pong: For this approach you might need two keyboards connected to the same computer. In contrast to the driver-navigator mode, in ping-pong both people can be driving at any point in time. A good strategy for this approach is to have one person writing the tests while the other one tries to pass them. As in the previous approach, you should be switching roles often.

Backseat navigator: A typical approach when there’s a new team member in the group or a junior colleague. The navigator (usually the more senior team member) tells the driver, who has the keyboard, what to do to solve a problem with every little detail. The navigator should provide insights on how to solve the problem but also on why that’s the best solution in mind. It’s a good way to ramp up new members in your team as they build relationships with other people in the team while learning about the working style.

Tour: If there is an even number of team members or someone who you used to pair with went on holidays, you are not going to stop working. However, when those people return or you start pairing with someone, you don’t want them to start right away. Therefore, a good way to start would be to do a ‘tour’ through the code or work you did in their absence. The person who doesn’t know the most about the work takes the keyboard and the mouse and starts driving through the code while the ‘expert’ acts as a navigator and explains every detail.

Distributed pairing: Often people tend to think pairing is for collocated teams but that’s not entirely true. While pairing face-to-face is definitely much more effective than remotely, there are many tools and ways colleagues can pair. A good suggestion would be to use a videoconference messaging tool with a screen sharing app that allows the navigator to see in real time what the driver is doing.

These are not the only pairing styles that you might encounter but they are the best known.  They are also the easier techniques to try when you want to start pair programming. Also, examples seem to focus on software development but pairing is applicable to almost every field.  For example if you are in marketing and are launching an email campaign, you can pair with someone to navigate through the email while you write it, etc.

There might be anti-patterns when pairing. For example, you might find cases when the navigator is ‘sleeping’. This means the navigator can be checking emails, texting or even coding in parallel without paying much attention to the driver. Try to identify the root causes of this behaviour before you jump in into action. Usually it might be because the driver is not explaining properly the reasons why he is doing a specific task in a particular way.

Lastly, keep in mind that while pair programming may work in every role or department, it might not be suitable for every work. There will be times when you just want to discuss the approach with the team and go do it by yourself. That’s also a way of getting feedback, which in the end is the main purpose of pair programming: getting feedback early.  

If you are interested in trying pair programming, the first thing to do is review the list of possible techniques (above) and select one that you will experiment with.  Then identify your pair.  Brainstorm on how you might approach pair programming, specify how long you will try your experiment, and begin.  

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Learn more about Antonio González Sanchis at https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniogonzalezsanchis/

Read more of Mario's article at: http://cmforagile.blogspot.com