Pair Programming: Effects of Trust on Software Quality

Trust is increasingly becoming an important area of research in software development with the proliferation of agile methodologies. In this study, we propose to investigate the effect of trust on the performance of a pair programming team. High levels of trust in the competence of the fellow member are hypothesized to increase the perceived effort applied in software development. This relationship is moderated by the characteristics of the software development task. Perceived effort applied at the task is hypothesized to mediate the relationship between trust and the team performance which is measured in terms of the solution quality. We propose to use a laboratory experiment to test our model. Limitations are discussed and future research directions are suggested.