Malcolm Gladwell, Transactive Memory, And Pair Programming
Posted May 27, 2008 at 2:12 PM
Thanks to a recommendation by Clark Valberg, I recently read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. It was a good read and I like Gladwell's somewhat meandering story telling style. One thing that he mentioned really caught my attention - Transactive Memory. In the book he explains that when two people are in a relationship, they develop a subconscious system as to which person is better at learning and storing different types of information. It is then up to that person to remember such data and to recall it when asked. Because this system is so effective, an intimate couple has much better recall abilities than two strangers. This seems logical when it is pointed out, but I think it not something that we generally think about.
After hearing about this Transactive Memory, it got me thinking about Pair Programming. Now, two people programming together hardly represent an intimate couple, but it has been demonstrated that couples that have been together a long time do not out perform couples that have been together for only a short while; the length of the relationship does not seem to weight in heavily on the ability to utilize this "shared memory" system. As such, I wonder if this is something that would apply to pair programmers? I know that when I tried pair programming with Peter Bell, I felt that we brought slightly different and complimentary skills to the table. But, that is an initial contribution. I wonder if, over time, if you were to pair program throughout the development life cycle, would development become even more efficient as you built up the Transactive Memory system between you? I can only believe that this does, in fact, happen and that pair programming with one person over time is more effective than pair programming in general.
Anyway, just some food for though.
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Reader Comments
Just stumbled upon your blog through the jquery post, of a year ago.
Looking at your latest posts, I really enjoyed this one, on transitive memory.
It would be interesting to go a few steps further, and finding out how we can find out if some matches have better transitive memory than others, or, if a certain setup would help making teams more effective, and happier...
Certainly something I will work-through my day of work today.
Thanks !
Posted by Nicolas Modrzyk on May 27, 2008 at 8:57 PM
Just realizing I wrote transitive instead of transactive. Although, we could also have a post on transitive memory in IT teams!
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12023&page=29
Posted by Nicolas Modrzyk on May 27, 2008 at 9:02 PM
That's a coincidence - I just finished reading The Tipping Point last night (I also highly recommend it). When I read about "transactive memory" it also got me thinking about pair programming and (specialisation within teams).
While it makes total sense it kind of goes against my natural desire to know everything, but I guess that's just ego!
Posted by James Marshall on May 28, 2008 at 7:30 AM
@James,
I know what you mean about it going against your natural desire to know everything :) I suffer from a bit of that myself. But remember, this is not a conscious effort; furthermore, this ability has only been demonstrated when pairs of people are allowed to remember things in a natural way; meaning, you cannot force one person to handle some info and another person to handle different info. The memory allocation must just happen naturally.
So, as much as you want to know everything, I don't think that interferes with this process as you would not be forced to know or not know stuff.
Posted by Ben Nadel on May 28, 2008 at 8:55 AM
