Evaluating Tools that Support Pair Programming in a Distributed Engineering Environment

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.