Combining Continuous Delivery with Pair Programming: Lessons Learned

"Pair programming and continuous integration can go hand-in-hand. Pushing to main multiple times a day is hard in isolation, leading to delays, large PRs, and merge issues, Ola Hast and Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom mentioned in their talk about continuous delivery with pair programming at QCon London. Pairing enables instant code review, easier refactoring, fewer bugs, and higher team resilience. In an earlier article, Hast and Mjølne Söderbom mentioned that their team uses pair and mob programming with TDD;"

"If our team of four developers were to work in isolation/alone, it would be nearly impossible to work with real CI. They would have to interrupt each other all the time. The immediate result of this is that they produce bigger tasks with bigger pull requests. It also disrupts our own flow. Then the whole concept of CI falls apart. We see this happen in other teams all the time."

Pair programming and continuous integration enable frequent pushes to main, smaller pull requests, faster feedback, easier refactoring, and fewer bugs. Teams using pair and mob programming with TDD eliminate solo tasks and separate code reviews, improving code quality and knowledge sharing. Working in isolation increases coordination overhead, causes larger tasks, merge conflicts, postponed refactoring, and disrupted flow. Real CI requires pushing small changes multiple times per day, which becomes nearly impossible when developers work alone. Frequent breaks during pairing help maintain focus and flow. Organizations often overlook time wasted waiting, and isolation amplifies visible delays and integration problems.

Read at InfoQ