Rietta.com: Why & How We Remote Pair Program
Check out this excellent presentation on remote pair programming from Frank Rietta and Brandon Dees, who run Rails web development consultancy rietta.com. They presented at the October 2013 meeting of the Atlanta Ruby Users' Group.
Slides available here: https://speakerdeck.com/rietta/why-and-how-we-remote-pair-program
Here were some of my take-aways:
They've managed to form a consultancy around remote pair programming and designed the billing strategy such that clients don't get an advantage by splitting pairs -- nor penalized for adding developers. This negates the "you guys shouldn't pair on this one" conversation.
There's an increasing trend of developer's pairing experience being entirely remote pair programming.
I was surprised to hear that several audience members were also experienced pair programmers.
I was very impressed by their professional A/V and lighting setup. It blows mine away.
One more thing: once they started fielding questions the conversation turned to pairing in general: are there times when they don't pair? How do they convince their clients pay for pair programming? It seems like someone should do a talk that's nothing but fielding pair programming questions...