Team and Culture · Published June 13, 2026
When Pairing Is Worth It
Pairing is expensive: two people, one job. So we only use it in specific situations.
Pair programming gets a lot of discussion. In practice, full-time pairing is unrealistic for a small team. But in defined scenarios it saves enormous rework and communication cost, and deserves deliberate scheduling.
Where it pays
The first version of a core path. Modules like payment, permissions and data sync are costly to get wrong, so two people design and build them together.
Diagnosing tricky defects. One drives while the other researches, running two threads in parallel beats one person context-switching.
A newcomer's first unknown module. Working the first two stories together is far faster than alone-plus-Q and A.
How we pair
Roles are explicit: one writes, one reviews and searches, swapping every half hour so nobody idles.
Timebox to two or three hours; efficiency falls after that, so we stop.
Write down what happened: what blocked, what worked, captured in the task or a document.
The test is simple: is the cost of getting this code wrong higher than two people's shared time?
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