Why you should pair program for six hours each day - half a year later

A while a go, I created this Medium post on pairing and how many hours of pairing is best for you and for clients.  You can read it in full on Medium. 

Some observations, half a year later:

- People find this confusing.  For far too long, we have been drumming the "we pair all the time" beat and it feels weird to roll this back now.  But then again, is good agile process not all about continuous improvement and reacting to changing circumstances?  When pairing started, most of us were not aware of the drawbacks (and those that were, voted with their feet by leaving).   To quote the Big Lebowski: "New stuff has come to light" (slightly edited for content).

- My management is not sure about this:  A company-wide rollout would remove barriers to using this, but they (understandably) worry about the economic consequences.  On the other hand, almost all other consultants never pair and they still bill for all of their hours, so there must be a way to resolve this. 

- Our clients get it.  There has been near-zero push-back from the client stakeholders on projects where we tried this. 

- Under-represented minorities are disproportionally affected by the lack of flexibility that is inherent in pairing for 40 hours a week. I don't have any public, hard data to prove this yet, but if you think about combining 9 to 6 with, for example, being a parent you can get a good idea of how hard this is.