A Comparison of Pair Programming to Inspections for Software Defect Reduction

Even though convinced of their efficacy, software development managers are looking for ways to reduce the cost of inspections. Recent work shows that inspections by two engineers have as good results as by using a larger team of five. This indicates that pair programming might be effective as an inspection technique, as other research shows that a meeting is not necessarily better than not meeting. An experiment was conducted to see if pair programming reduces defects more than formal inspections. Results indicate that pair programming is more effective. A defect rate of 9.6 per thousand lines of code, much lower than that of a heavier method, were achieved. The implications for teaching are explored.