Agile lessons learned #6 : It takes two to tango.

Agile lessons learned #6 : It takes two to tango

In early April 1999, FreeFall inc’s first major web project was canned. Andrew, the lead tech on this project was now without a project to work on.

Being the best and youngest programmer of his former team, he was quickly drafted by a small team working on embedded software. After the first week Andrew felt devastated. He was back to working with old technology with team members whose age averaged more than his own parents’. The last time most of these guys had followed any resemblance of a training course, Andrew was busy fighting teen acne.

Even worse, through the years these guys had developed their own technologies and terminology and were totally cut off the rest of the world. Andrew began feeling like Christopher Columbus might have had it easy with the culture shock compared to him.

Around that time, pro wrestling was the biggest thing on prime time TV. Andrew and his college buddies would gather on Monday nights to watch the “rasslin”.

“Man, that old dude is just becoming a parody of his former self.” Said Andrew
“What d’ya mean” said Mike
“Just look at him! He couldn’t wrestle his way out of a paper bag. He’s dragging all the young guys down. All of his matches have the crowd booing him out of the building as of late”
“Oh really ? “How about his up and coming opponent; are they any good or just a bunch of jobbers ? ”
“Oh man they’re great. They are doing this new fast-paced Japanese influenced style.”
“Oh ok. Couldn’t they just make him look good ? The whole thing is staged after all you know.”
“Look at them, they are booing both guys now. And they’re cutting the match short. ”

“One…..two….threeeeeeeeee it’s over” said the commentator with some despair in his voice.
“Finally it’s over. Out with the dinosaur. Man I wish I could get rid of the dinosaurs I’m working with within a three count.” Said Andrew.

Andrew went on explaining how terrible it was to work with guys that were so behind the curve and so slow.

“I wish I could help but this is pretty desperate. Management won’t unblock any budget for training courses or for coaching.”
“That’s sad. Ever tried doing some pair-programming with these guys?”
“Pair programming? What’s that ? ”
“Well basically two programmer sit together in front of a single computer and program together. Each of them has a specific role. The pilot and copilot just like in a rally.
The pilot pretty much executes the coding, while the copilot takes notes of what the duo wants to accomplish, review what the pilot is doing and gives feedback on the work being done.
“At a frequent interval, each of them alternate the roles. This breaks monotony and keeps you refreshed. How often have you felt drained after a long session of programming ?”
“All the time.”
“Well this will help you out. Also, this process will protect you from yourself. Meaning that with continuous peer review, it it much harder for you to rationalize introducing weird bits of code into the software. Every time you do, someone else will be there to catch it.”
“As a matter of fact, after a while, most realize that the quality of their work starts going up. Way up.”
“Finally, working with a real human rather than working alone with a computer makes the whole programming process more human. You have to experience it for yourself, but you’d have a hard time going back to locking yourself away in a cubicle after a couple of weeks of pair programming.”

“That sounds great but how will that help me with my elderlies? I mean won’t they just slow me down? ”
“At first yes. Like anything else in life there will be a learning curve. But after a while all the discussion brought by the continuous exchanges will bring the other guys up to speed like you wouldn’t believe.”

“You know Andrew, it’s true what they say : it really does takes two to tango.”
“What do you mean.”
“Remember when we used to say that a particular wrestler was so good he could have a four-star match wrestling against a broomstick.”
“Yeah”
“What it means is that if you really are as good as you pretend to be, it’s your job to make other people better than they could ever be by themselves. Who knows, you might even learn a trick or two from the old dogs”

-Nicholas Lemay