One Project, One Buddy

It’s common in software engineering teams to assign a feature or small project to only one software engineer who is in charge of delivering it.

Instead, I advocate for always assigning any non-trivial task to a pair of engineers.

Working with a single buddy instead of solo brings clear advantages:

• You cannot easily fool yourself about the advancement of the project
• Explaining your thoughts to your buddy forces clarity, improving your understanding and helping spot problems early
• It’s easy to brainstorm ideas or debug something with someone who shares your mental model
• Someone is more likely to be available to answer external questions or report on progress

You can have more people on a larger-scale project, but adding headcount increases communication cost and dilutes responsibility.

Beyond the pair, two additions strengthen the setup: LLM tools for rapid prototyping and knowledge lookup, and periodic manager check-ins for external accountability.

Like in scuba diving, having one and only one assigned buddy is a great idea.