Pair Programming and Software Defects--A Large, Industrial Case Study

TLDR

Interest in pair programming has grown over the last decade, yet substantial evidence of its effects in industrial settings remains scarce. The study aimed to evaluate pair programming by analyzing the work of 17 industrial developers over 14 months. We examined the impact of pair programming on software quality across five distinct scenarios within the team’s development process. Results indicate that pair programming yields a perceptible but modest reduction in defects in these industrial contexts.

Abstract

In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in pair programming (PP). However, despite the existing work, there is still a lack of substantial evidence of the effects of PP in industrial environments. To address this issue, we have analyzed the work of a team of 17 industrial developers for 14 months. The team is part of the IT department of a large Italian manufacturing company; it adopts a customized version of extreme programming (XP). We have investigated the effects of PP on software quality in five different scenarios. The results show that PP appears to provide a perceivable but small effect on the reduction of defects in these settings.