Along with the increasing popularity of agile software development, software work has become much more social than ever. Contemporary software teams rely on a variety of collaborative practices, such as pair programming, the topic of our study. Many agilists advocated the importance of collocation, face-to-face interaction, and physical artefacts incorporated in the shared workspace, which the COVID-19 pandemic made unavailable; most software companies around the world were forced to send their engineers to work from home. As software projects and teams overnight turned into dis-tributed collaborations, we question what happened to the pair programming practice in the work-from-home mode. This paper reports on a longitudinal study of remote pair programming in two companies. We conducted 38 interviews with 30 engineers from Norway, Sweden, and the USA, and used the results of a survey in one of the case companies. Our study is unique as we collected the data longitudinally in April/May 2020, Sep/Oct 2020, and Jan/Feb 2021. We found that pair programming has decreased and some interviewees report not pairing at all for almost a full year. The experiences of those who paired vary from actively co-editing the code by using special tools to more passively co-reading and discussing the code and solutions by sharing the screen. Finally, we found that the interest in and the use of PP over time, since the first months of forced work from home to early 2021, has admittedly increased, also as a social practice.
翻译:随着灵活软件开发的日益普及,软件工作变得比以往更加具有社会性。当代软件团队依靠各种协作做法,如配对编程,这是我们研究的主题。许多监督员主张在共享工作空间内采用同地办公、面对面互动和体力制品的重要性,COVID-19的流行使得无法进行这种工作空间;全世界大多数软件公司被迫将工程师送离家工作。由于软件项目和团队一夜之间变成分散式合作,我们质疑工作与家庭模式的对口编程做法。本文报告了两家公司远程对口编程的纵向研究。我们与来自挪威、瑞典和美国的30名工程师进行了38次访谈,并在其中一个案例公司使用了调查结果。我们的研究是独一无二的,因为我们在2020年4月/5月、2020年9月/Oct和2021年Jan/Feb 2021年长期收集了数据。我们发现对口配对制节目减少了,有些受访者则在近一整年不配对。本文报告关于两家公司远程对口编程的长式研究。我们与30名工程师进行了38次访谈,对口采访,在其中一个案例公司进行了调查的结果是,最后通过共同分享了20个月后发现,从积极分享代码的方式,从我们通过共同阅读了20个月后发现,从开始开始,开始,开始对接用特殊理解,从开始,开始的兴趣,通过共同阅读了20个工具,通过共同阅读方式理解,从开始,从开始,开始,开始,从开始,开始,开始,开始,开始,开始,开始就采用了一种特殊的阅读了20个月,开始,开始,开始讨论,开始讨论,开始的兴趣的兴趣的兴趣也增加了对调。