How to obtain flow while pair programming in agile development?
- by bizso09
Flow is is concept introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi In short, it means what most to get into the "zone". You feel immeresed in the task you are doing, you are in deep focus and concentration and the task difficulty is just right for you, but challenging at the same time. When people acquire flow their prodctivity shoots up. Programming requires great deal of mental focus and programmers need to juggle several things in their mind at once. Many like to work in a quite environment where they can direct their full attention to the task. If they are interreupted, it may take several minutes, sometimes hours to get back into flow.
I understand that agile way of doing software development is called pair prograaming. This is pormoted in Extreme programming too. It means you put the whole software development team in one room so that communication is seamless. You do programming with your pair because this way you get instant code reviews and fix bugs sooner.
However, I alwys had problem obtaining flow while doing pair programming because of the contant stream of interrupts. I'm thinking deep about an issue then all of sudden someone asks me a question from another pair. My train of thought is all lost.
How can you obtain and keep flow while doing agile pair programming?
