I just attended a fascinating workshop here at SPA 2008 - a set of pairing exercises. It was run by John Daniels, Laura Hill, and John Cleal, and it was one of the best run sessions I've been at here (which is saying a lot - they've all been pretty good).

We split into two groups (one of 4, the other of 5), and then ran through four exercises. In some we worked alone, and in others we paired - and after each one, we compared notes and filled in a questionnaire. The exercises were:

• Descriptive writing - describe the painting (below) in 200 words, as if you were explaining it to a blind person. I did this one solo
• Scheduling - given a home redesign job, schedule the tasks optimally to take the least time, assuming that personnel costs are no issue. I did that one solo.
• Personnel - interview a problem employee, and see if you can come to a mutually agreeable solution - I did that in a pair
• Manual - we had a lego model (fairly complex) to build. I did that in a pair.

The interesting conclusion we came to (in my group, at least) was that the personnel issue was best dealt with by more than one person. Having a second person in the room kept the discussion away from emotion, and I think that's something I'll take away from this. The Lego exercise merely documented my well known spatial issues :)

It was a fun workshop - if they run it again, I'd recommend it.

Technorati Tags: pairing