Pair programming and other agile techniques: An overview and a hands-on experience

Abstract

Although Agile programming methodologies are still relatively young, it is already possible to draw up an initial assessment of their potential outcome. This article provides a historical overview and a short description of these programming techniques and their relevant key tenets. Besides, based on several years of application, a practical point of view is provided, identifying the key points that demonstrated real long-term effectiveness as well as the unavoidable deviations from the theoretical model. At last, an interesting example of a practical application is given, regarding the development of a speech recognition-based squelch algorithm, suited for radio communications especially in the noisy HF range, useful for defense and security applications. In this case, not only has the application of Pair Programming led to the rapid integration of a newcomer in a well-established work group, but it also led to a simple and practical algorithm, which is reliable and easily implementable both in hardware and in software, with very promising performances: voiceXtract™.