Extreme Programming Pair Generator

This example demonstrates the pair generator we use in Extreme Programming.

Extreme Programming minimises error by insisting that all important code must be written by two people working at the same computer at the same time... and you have to move people around so that a mountain biking accident can't leave gaping holes in the collective knowledge of the system.

For these reasons, we have a rule that the same two people can never pair together for two days running. It's a pain to work out new pairs every morning... so, being developers—and in particular, Resolver One developers—we coded a workbook to solve the problem...

Before you begin

Download the file from the Resolver Exchange.

Using the pair generator

Setting up

To set it up for your team...

In the first column, enter the names of your team.

(If you have more people than can fit into the space, select Data, Edit Names and change the size of the ranges availableCol, ownerCol, and people.)

Generating pairs

Each day...

In the Available? column enter "n" against anyone who is not able to do development work today—for example, people who are on vacation.
In the Owner? column, enter "y" against anyone who owns a user story.
In the Previous pairs box, enter the pairs from yesterday.

The Today's pairs box shows the pairs for today, and the Lucky spiker box shows anyone who is left over when an odd number of people are available. ("Spiker" because they can work on spiking future development rather than pairing on production code.)

And that's it!

We hope you find this as useful as we do.

Comments

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