First pair programming experiences

Yesterday we started with a usual Monday Planning Game for this week, it took us approx. 2 hours, so I figure we're getting better at it.

We carried on the stories unfinished in the previous Iteration, and allocated a bit more than last week, but less than the first week, we'll see how that turns out.

Yesterday I encouraged the team to pair a little, so two of the programmers worked on separate things, and another two paired (a junior and a senior). They obviously did seem to take much fun out of it, I personally hope to have raised their productivity.

The people sat together at one laptop (I know it isn't how it's supposed to be, but I'll deal with that later) and so after watching them for a few minutes I told the other guy to bring his keyboard and mouse and plug it in, so they both were able to easily type and move around.

I have my personal doubts about Pair Programming to go over, and fears to diminish. I am quite sure that PP should be used a lot, I not sure how much, pairing for 100% of the coding time does not make sense to me. 50%, 70%, but 100%? There are many simple tasks that no matter how much heads you put together it isn't gonna make it nor faster nor better. I know the arguments, I just have that gut feeling (fear?) and some mixed experiences with that on previous teams that lead me to this conclusion. Though I'd be very happy to discover otherwise. E.g. I never got close to achieving the 15% overhead of PP as measured by Alistair Cockburn, I have some thoughts on why that might've happened to me but that doesn't change the fact.