Pair programming means double cost per developer Is it worth that money

Question

Pair programming in Agile requires us to double the salary paid to single programmer. Of course with such approach the quality of the code is far cry better, bugs are found much earlier and so forth, but is that still worth that money? Maybe we should pay the 2nd developer's salary to the few testers (the latter are usually much cheaper than the qualified programmer)? Does anybody have any experience with such comparison?

Answer 1

It's difficult to answer because I've spent time working in both a pairing-required and a pairing-optional setting. The best code I've seen isn't written in a paired environment. This is most likely due to the quality and discipline of the individual developers. When some of the coders aren't top-tier, partnering can be a good way to get your money's worth. However, if all of the coders are experienced, well-disciplined coders, partnering all of the time is a waste of money.

Carrying a pager is an experience I've experienced several times that has had a significant impact on my coding discipline and the quality of the work I generate. It impacts how I code when I have to support a system for which I develop. That is, I code in a way that prevents the pager from ringing. As a result, the product is of higher quality, and the code is usually of higher quality as well. I've seen coders who have never carried a pager produce more brittle code. They won't be able to comprehend or improve on it until they've been on support for a while.