Accountability partner

Andrew Montalenti advocates for a pair programming pattern where two developers act as each other’s accountability partners. 

1. Synchronously lay out a plan, or rough design sketch.

2. Asynchronously develop some implementation prototypes, and few functions and classes.

3. Synchronously discuss the pros and cons of each implementation approach.

4. Asynchronously refine the prototypes based on each other’s feedback, with the intention of arriving at a consensus solution.

5. Synchronously agree a plan for how to implement the functionality and the tasks each person is responsible for.

6. Asynchronously work on individual coding tasks.

7. Synchronously integrate the individual pieces of code.

8. Asynchronously review the merged code and polish it further if you must. 

A pattern such as this can balance the need to work at your own pace with the benefit of learning from a colleague’s problem solving approach. Whatever you do, resist dogma on your teams. Pairing has its benefits, but the agile manifesto also emphasises “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. If you’ve got great people on the team, your priority must be to find ways to collaborate in an effective and inclusive manner. Avoid practising something without respecting the context.