An Economic Analysis of Pair Programming

Permission is granted to quote short excerpts and to reproduce figures and tables from this report, provided that the source of such material is fully acknowledged. In this appendix, we present a detailed economic analysis of pair programming based on the empirical study conducted at the University of Utah, as discussed in Chapter 4. (You should probably read Chapter 4 before reading this because we won't go back over the details of the experiment.) In Chapter 4, we indicated that pairs produce higher quality code but that it might take 15% longer to produce this higher quality code. Once code is written, it then goes on to testing and ultimately to the customer. When you consider the savings of putting higher quality code into test and into the hands of the customer, our economic analysis shows that this initial 15% cost is more than made up for. We write this appendix for the reader who would like to know more about how we can claim the overall lifecycle affordability of pair programming.