In my previous company we experimented with "promiscuous pairing". The idea is that you swap partners every hour and a half or so. You would spend 2 time slots

In my previous company we experimented with "promiscuous pairing". The idea is that you swap partners every hour and a half or so. You would spend 2 time slots on each partnership, in the first you were the beginner, the second the teacher. We found this had a profound effect on both morale and velocity. We'd already beenp pairing up until this point but the partnerships tended to last for as long as it took to implement a story. In practice there were favoured partnerships and differences of opinion that had become engrained. By swapping partnerships frequently there was always someone in beginners mind. Because the top level business case was always the first thing people asked it forced people to justify every decision in that context. We found this prevented people from going down "rabbit holes" which in turn led to the dramatic increase in velocity. There's obviously other benefits such as knowledge sharing e.g. a new key shortcus would be found and round the team within hours. If you want to know more about promiscuous programming and the beginners mind I recommend taking a look at http://mitchlacey.com/docs/XR4PromiscuousPairingandBeginnersMind.pdf http://mitchlacey.com/docs/XR4PromiscuousPairingandBeginners....