Pair Programming: Collocated Vs. Distributed

Collocation is almost always a preferred alternative compared to Distributed. It makes sense that collocated team members are more likely to perform better than distributed team members. However, in today’s real world the distributed nature is either the norm or quickly becoming the norm. That is not to say that collocation no longer exists, but rather it is becoming less and less pronounced. Pair programming is a technique that can be performed in a collocated or distributed fashion. Not all software development projects use this practice. The projects that do undertake this programming method typically perform collocated or distributed pair programming, but very rarely use both. This paper examines a project where both types of pair programming were used. At the completion of the project, all developers were asked to complete a survey. The results of the survey allowed us to compare various attributes of collocated and distributed pair programming. What may be surprising is that in some cases the differences between the two are minimal.

@article{Rajpal2018,
  title     = {Pair Programming: Collocated Vs. Distributed},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {9},
  number    = {1},
  year      = {2018},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Mark Rajpal},
  doi       = {10.14569/SpecialIssue.2018.090199},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/SpecialIssue.2018.090199}
}