Speaker
Abstract
In the autumn of 2021, SpareBank 1, one of the largest savings banks in Norway, decided to take a new direction by significantly increasing how often we deployed to production, going from daily to hourly frequency. We quickly experienced something very interesting: it was nearly impossible with this high frequency of deployments without doing pair/mob programming.
This shift proved transformative: it enhanced development speed, focus, and flow while reducing errors. Developers also reported greater satisfaction, frequently citing improved focus and smoother workflows. The quality of delivered software significantly improved and customers got better products.
In this presentation, we will explain how we changed course, how we tested continuous deployment with tiny changes, and how the number of deployments increased dramatically. We will explain why deploying small changes while developing (and not after it is finished) has become crucial if you want to do modern software development.
You will learn about the positive consequences we experienced on reducing use of pull requests and test environments, improved pair/mob programming, quality, focus, flow, psychological safety, and more - without it being a goal in itself.
Furthermore, we will explain how we, together with SINTEF, have done so-called "pair programming interventions" with teams in periods of 3-4 weeks, and successfully introduced pair/mob programming in a successful way.
Interview
In our day-to-day job, we are software developers in an autonomous team of five people. We both love programming.
Since we started working together, we have constantly been looking for better and more efficient ways of working. From the very beginning, our focus was simple: break everything down into tiny pieces, get fast feedback, reduce waste, work together on everything, and have fun doing it.
We quickly learned that to be able to deploy to production several times an hour, code reviews (and pull requests) had to be done as part of the development process, and not as a handover to someone else. This means pair/mob programming became 100% necessary to keep up flow, focus, and speed. Code reviews and pull requests disappeared as a natural consequence of doing modern software development. TDD became not just meaningful, but necessary. We hardly use test environments anymore; instead, we test locally, on CI, and in production.
We work across the organization to spread the knowledge of how we work, both through coaching and talks. We also work closely with scientists at SINTEF Digital, and we do external talks at conferences and help other companies in Norway.
We want to show people that working this way is possible, even though we work in finance and have apps that handle millions of requests per day. We want to demonstrate that it is possible to do modern software development with low stress and a resting heart rate.
Everyone who wants to deliver better software faster, who wants to improve their focus and flow, and who wants to improve their team's psychological safety. The talk does not require a high technical level and should be valuable for everyone from developers to leaders.
The talk explains explicit, actionable things that all teams can use immediately when they get back to their office. For example, how to start pair programming, how to increase focus, how to split a new feature into small pieces, and deploy to production several times a day.
We do not think we have seen the peak of GenAI, but we do not think it will replace us entirely. Finding ways of working with GenAI without compromising the quality of the code will be crucial. We think that the core methods of software development, like building systems that are easy to maintain and change, will be even more important in the future.
Topics
QCon London 2025 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.
Part of the track
Engineering Productivity and Developer Experience Hosted by Blanca Rojo Executive Director, Distinguished Engineer and Cloud Engineer @UBSFrom the same track
Monday 7 April
10:35 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session developer productivity Productivity Is Messing Around and Having Fun Holly Cummins, Trisha Gee Developer satisfaction, developer joy, and business results are strongly correlated. Developer productivity frameworks like SPACE recognize this, with Satisfaction being a key metric. And yet - our jobs are frustrating, filled with mindless work, and free of joy. How do we fix that? 11:45 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session pair programming Continuous Delivery Is Not Possible Without Pair Programming: Lessons From SpareBank 1 and SINTEF in Norway Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom, Ola Hast In the autumn of 2021, SpareBank 1, one of the largest savings banks in Norway, decided to take a new direction by significantly increasing how often we deployed to production, going from daily to hourly frequency. 13:35 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session Platform Engineering Achieve Optimal Efficiency for your Developer Experience Teams Fabien Deshayes Engineering Manager - Platform & Developer Experience @Monzo, Previously @Spotify Developer Experience teams are quite popular these days as organisations understand the value of optimising for developers productivity. 14:45 Fleming (3rd Fl.) Session Coding From Autocomplete to Agents: AI Coding State of Play Birgitta Böckeler Global Lead for AI-assisted Software Delivery @Thoughtworks, Software Developer, Architect, and Technical Leader, 20 Years Experience in Technology After almost 2 years of intense attention givent to coding assistants, at the beginning of 2025, many organizations were disappointed by the measurable results. The recent arrival of coding assistance agents though has stirred up and reset expectations and the hype. 15:55 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session Your Platform is Not an Island: Embracing Evolution in Your Ecosystem Rachael Wonnacott Associate Director for Container Platform Engineering @Fidelity International As with most forms of engineering it is easy to talk about theory in the abstract, but typically more nuanced to implement. Platform engineering is no exception. While the term has become increasingly popular over the last few years, it is a concept that is organically evolving within industry. 17:05 Rutherford (4th Fl.) Unconference Unconference: Engineering Productivity and Developer Experience