Pair and tri-programming

Extreme Programming (XP) introduced pair programming, which has faced significant resistance as the implication is programmers will move half as fast. Honestly, we think that’s silly. One dirty little secret of computer programming is that most programmers do not and cannot seem to work a full 8-hour day. Programmers check emails, Slack, message boards, social media, and all other kinds of distractions. There’s coffee to get (and re-get), and, for the ones who work from home, laundry to do and sandwiches to make. The little secret of pair programming is that both people need to be on-task. If a typical programmer spends only half the day in deep work, moving to pairs can double the deep work time. That is no significant loss of forward velocity. The second set of eyes and ears can catch problems the first would not have seen.

Ping-pong is a common way to do test-driven development, where one person takes the keyboard and writes a test, and...