Ping Pong Development

Back in my Suncorp days (sounds like the far past doesn't it ;), we did "XP with the notches turned up to 11." One of the really good practices we used was when pairing, we'd have one developer writing the test, and the other implementing the production code. This works well if the code writer tries to be as painful as possible by writing the absolute simplest code, thus forcing the test writer to improve the tests. And the cycle goes on...

So it seems that this technique actually has a name, it's called "ping-pong development". Mike Spille discusses it in Action Hippo Rangers! as well as some other things I've noticed with 180 degree turns. While I don't see the sense in going to the extreme he cites, the ping-pong nature of paired development works really really well. As for the 180 degree turns... well, I've seen both some good and some harm come from it.