"Pairing": two's productive, three's a crowd

I find it productive and rewarding to have two people sitting at a computer. But if three people sit at a computer, things don't go so well. I get the feeling that we usually get less done than with two people, which is frustrating as well as wasteful.
So if somebody comes and joins your pair (probably because you wanted to show or ask them something) I suggest that one person should duck out. I call this "bump pairing" because somebody gets bumped out by the newcomer.

What should you do after being bumped out? You might well join somebody who is "odd" (sitting by themselves). It could be the person left behind by the newcomer who bumped you out: a straight swap. Or you could fill in for somebody missing through a natural break like having a smoke or taking an important call. A different option is to offer help to a complete pair. If your help is wanted then logically you should bump out one of its members. And so another person is free...

Bump pairing could result in faster pair rotation. I think of it as providing a higher frequency wave of pair rotation, overlaid on a more traditional slower wave of rotation. In this model each member of the team belongs to a single natural pair (the one that signed up to deliver a story, for example), but might also find themselves working in a number of short-term temporary pairs. I suspect something like this happens already in most teams, but it is useful to explicitly recommend that trioing is avoided.

Oh, the waste

How important is wine? In our world where thousands die needlessly each day, and with terrorism on the doorstep, I suppose it's not very important at all. But to throw away whole bottles of good, well-chosen wine pained me immensely.
This morning I experienced some of the new restrictions to UK-related air travel. Liquids are not allowed in the cabin. We heard about the worrying developments of last week while on holiday in Italy, but we thought it would be fine to carry the few bottles we had already picked up in a suitcase. It's been a few years, but bottles of spirits used to make it back fine from Ibiza. Sadly this assumption was wrong and we had to remove 5 bottles of wine from their carefully protected positions in my Oyster luggage and dispose of them. There was no way for us to have them sent separately, and we didn't hold much hope of finding a shipping office open at 9am on a Sunday morning. We gave a couple of bottles to some Germans in the next check-in queue, who were not subject to the same restrictions, and we drunk most of a third before going through security. That left two bottles to be added to the impressive pile of bottles left by other passengers in the same situation. Drinking a bottle of wine in the airport was a surprisingly rewarding experience. A barman at the land-side bar was obligingly removing corks for a long line of us - no British jobsworth here. Then we sat outside in the morning sun - great.



Now I have to prepare for my next planned flight, London to New York on Tuesday. I suspect this will be more challenging. Let's just hope that the new restrictions combined with other action of the security services is effective against the current threat.