Skip to content
Ping Pong Pair Programming

Pair-programming game: ping-pong

Ping Pong Pair Programming

Blog post series

This blog post is part of a series about pair-programming games. To read about more please click see more sessions on pair-programming games.

Purposes

  • Learn pair-programming easier
  • Force the “know-it-all” programmer to see other ways of writing code
  • Force the “know-it-all” programmer to collaborate more
  • Push for collective code ownership

Concept

The roles driver and navigator change often inside the pair.
This activity is like a game of ping-pong of the roles between the two members of the pair. They both can take short time decisions while being a driver and can spot strategic design decisions while being a navigator.
Refactoring can be made by any of the programmers on their turn, but only when the code and the tests are stable.

ping-pong

Architectural Kata Budapest

Architectural Kata – Budapest

Architectural Kata Budapest

Following the invitation of Zsolt Bodo I facilitated an Architectural Kata in the Budapest Agile community. The purpose of the session was to let the attendees speak about architecture and I was merely a facilitator. My other role was the customer, clarifying the requirements whenever the audience requested.

The concept remains the same as for the first Architectural Kata I facilitated: you cannot be a good architect if you do not have the experience. An architect creates 10-15 architectures during the whole career, so we need to practice to become better architects. This session is exactly a repetitive exercise of creating architectures for given, unclear, requirements.

Architectural Kata Budapest
Architectural Kata Budapest
Architectural Kata

Architectural Kata

Architectural Kata

I first got into contact with this notion at the SoCraTes conference in 2012 when Benjamin facilitated not one, but two sessions. Unfortunately then I could not have attended as I was too tired from the sessions I had facilitated.
Last year I met again Benjamin at the XP Germany conference. Then I really attended his session. You can read more about that here.

We (mostly my brother Alex) decided to bring this Architectural Kata to the Bucharest community. And last week we had the first one.

The main idea behind this concept is that you cannot be a good architect if you do not have the experience. If you are an architect you create maybe 10-15 systems in your life, so that is surely not enough to be a good one. So with this session we do a repetitive exercise of creating architectures for some requirements.

Architectural Kata
Architectural Kata