Software Process Fusion: Uniting Pair Programming and Solo Programming Processes

The role of pair programming process in software development is controversial. This controversy arises in part from their being presented as alternatives, yet it would be more helpful to see them as complementary software management tools. This paper describes the application of such a complementary model, software process fusion (SPF), in a real-world software management situation in China. Pair and solo programming are adopted at different stages of the process and according to the background of programmers, as appropriate. Unlike the usual practice of eXtreme Programming, in which all production code must written in pairs, all-the-time pair programming, the proposed model encourages programmers to design code patterns of their own in pairs and then to use these patterns to build sub-modules solo. The report finds that the longer team members work alone, the more code patterns they develop for reuse later in pairs.