Organizing remote pair programming

The steps mentioned in this section will help support your endeavor of starting remote pair programming. It's not a full, bulletproof plan, but we will take care of the main aspects, such as the reason for pair programming, operational details, social considerations, and how to apply all of these to a distributed team. Paying attention to the details will help you make a more effective transition to remote pair programming.

Let's begin with the first step.

The purpose of remote pairing

The first thing I ask my customers is: why do you need X?, and believe me, way too often I don't get a clear answer, or the answer is simply I heard it's good, and we need it. Unfortunately, it is most likely that they haven't heard, read, or understood enough about the technique, tool, or method they want to implement. Even worse, they believe the new thing can help in various areas, where, in fact, it can't help at all.

So...