Evaluating Tools that Support Pair Programming in a Distributed Engineering Environment

Abstract

The construction and improvement of high-quality products in a global software development environment requires (a) flexible practices for collaboration and (b) tools that support these practices in a distributed software development team. Pair Programming (PP), a well-known agile practice has been reported to improve software productivity and software quality in co-located environments. However, in a distributed environment PP needs stronger tool support to address new challenges like communication, distributed collaboration, and data exchange. This paper introduces a systematic tool evaluation approach for distributed pair programming (DPP) and reports on an initial tool survey of open source tools. Major findings were that (a) DPP was not fully supported by any tool under investigation and (b) some tools are limited to selective and individual aspects of DPP requirements. The results of this tool evaluation can help project managers in selecting adequate tools and tool developers in providing high-value features for better support of DPP as basis for improving the quality of distributed engineering projects.

Contributors

Dietmar Winkler

Stefan Biffl

Conference

Publication date: April 2010

Publication date (Print): April 2010

Pages: 1-10

Affiliations

Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems

Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Favoritenstrasse 9-11/188, 1040 Vienna, Austria

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EASE2010.7

Copyright statement: © Dietmar Winkler et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. 14th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE), Keele University, UK

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 14th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE)

Conference acronym: EASE

Conference number:

Conference location: Keele University, UK

Conference date: 12 - 13 April 2010

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EASE2010.7

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing