Pair Programming

An agile engineering practice where two programmers work together at one workstation — one writes code (the 'driver') while the other reviews each line in real time (the 'navigator'). They switch roles frequently. Pair programming improves code quality by catching errors before tests run, promotes knowledge sharing across the team, reduces the risk of knowledge silos, and results in simpler designs. Studies show that while pairing takes slightly more person-hours than solo coding, it produces significantly fewer defects, reducing downstream rework costs. Pairing is a core practice in Extreme Programming (XP) and is increasingly used by agile teams that prioritize code quality and collective ownership.