I am doing a thesis on this – how cultural differences between programmers effect the pair programming practice which inevitabley effect the whole quality of the project.

Regarding the “afraid of looking stupid” bit, I think of that as the locker room effect. The first time you enter into a place where everybody is naked, it is really scary to take your pants off. But once you get used to it, it’s not a big deal, because everybody is naked. Being explicit about that seems to help some people adjust.

As to the fear of looking like you’re having fun in front of management, I definitely have seen that, too. There are some places that have a “if you ain’t sweating, you ain’t working” ethic, and I think there’s no short-term solution for that. (I did blog about a long-term approach, though.) But some people have that reflex even when their managers honestly don’t think that way, in which case having the managers be clear that they value results more than appearances can work wonders.

I still feel like a lot of the barriers are cultural. Most people that are, seem to be inhibited from giving pairing a proper go because, for various reasons, they’re afraid to look stupid in front of their peers or look like they’re slacking off and enjoying themselves in front of management.

With one of the teams that I’ve worked with previously, when discussing whether to pair and where to start, I suggested to them that they pair on everything, all of the time. It was only when the team was starting to ask the question “why do we still need to pair on this piece of work?” or I was discussing in 1-2-1s their respective frustrations with having to pair on pieces of work that were perceived to be simple enough to warrant not pairing, that we then did a retrospective on pairing to define when the team would pair and what they would pair on. I’ve tried to come up with a natty title for this pattern and the best I can do is “The Wood For The Trees”, I’ve blogged myself about an agile adoption pattern called Wax On, Wax Off and I think that title could be applied here too. Perhaps somebody else reading this will be able to suggest a better title.

More recently I’ve observed something similar to what you mention above, heroics being valued above craftsmanship. In my case though I think there is a subtle difference which is worthy of note. With developers that have for a long time been managing their own pipe lines and putting themselves under pressure to deliver it’s difficult to make them feel as though they have the space to be doing the right thing, particularly when they perceive that to get to a point where they are doing the “right thing” to be such a big step in to the unknown. Ironically of course, it’s at times like this that pairing can be most effective and as such, it is important to offer as much support as possible.

Hope that helps.