Breaking to Build: How Chaos-Driven Pair Programming Strengthens System Resilience
Why top engineering teams use structured failure to harden their code, improve debugging, and minimize downtime.
No system is perfect. Even the most rigorously tested applications will eventually fail—whether due to unexpected inputs, edge cases, or infrastructure failures. The real question isn’t whether things will break, but how quickly and effectively teams can respond when they do.
That’s why leading engineering organizations aren’t just focusing on writing cleaner code; they’re also intentionally testing its failure points in a controlled environment. One of the most effective (yet underutilized) ways to do this is by integrating chaos-driven pair programming exercises into regular development workflows.
By deliberately “breaking” systems in structured, team-based exercises, organizations can accelerate developer onboarding by exposing teams to real-world failure scenarios, improve troubleshooting speed by helping engineers recognize failure patterns faster, and strengthen overall system resilience by identifying weak points before they cause production incidents.
If your engineering team only practices building, they’re only seeing half the picture. A failure-informed approach helps future-proof your architecture and keeps your teams sharp under pressure.
Turning Pair Programming Inside Out: Get Perspective on Failure Readiness
Pair programming is typically seen as a technique for improving code quality and reducing defects. But what if it could also be used as a tool for failure rehearsal?
Rather than focusing on writing new features, teams can use structured pair programming sessions to intentionally stress-test the system, working together to simulate failures, track dependencies, and document recovery strategies. This “inside-out” approach helps teams learn the system more deeply, seeing how features degrade under failure conditions. It also helps develop a troubleshooting mindset that can reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and it strengthens collaboration across engineering and operations by making failure response a shared responsibility.
How to Run Chaos-Driven Pair Programming Sessions
A structured chaos exercise focuses on a specific feature, process, or failure scenario. Engineers work together in pairs or small groups to deliberately introduce problems, observe system behavior, and document their findings.
For example:
- Search Functionality: What happens if a core dependency fails? How does the system recover when search results omit critical data?
- Checkout & Payments: How does the system react if tax calculations return null values? What happens when a third-party API times out?
- Content & UI Resilience: If product images fail to load or CMS data is malformed, does the system degrade gracefully?
Each scenario is followed by a structured post-mortem, where teams analyze what broke, how long it took to identify the issue, and what improvements can be made. Armed with real-world tested data, teams can then implement fail-safes to proactively head issues off before they can arise, helping ensure you can continue to deliver the commerce experiences your customers rely on.
The Business Impact: Why CIOs Should Care
The value of failure-informed engineering isn’t just theoretical. Companies that integrate structured failure testing into their workflows see measurable business benefits. First and foremost, there’s faster issue resolution—engineers who regularly practice diagnosing and mitigating failures develop sharper troubleshooting skills, allowing them to resolve production incidents more efficiently. Studies on incident response highlight that teams with proactive failure drills and postmortem analysis significantly reduce downtime and mitigate the business impact of outages.
Failure-informed engineering also tends to result in fewer outages for live experiences, because the team has identified weaknesses before they cause real-world failures, which reduces the risk of high-severity incidents. This also leads to more resilient systems overall. Teams that proactively break their own systems build architectures that recover more gracefully from unexpected issues.
In high-stakes industries—where downtime means lost revenue, regulatory risks, or customer churn—failure readiness is just as important as feature development.
Making It Work: Implementing a Failure-Resilient Engineering Culture
For CIOs looking to integrate chaos-driven pair programming into their organizations, the key is structured implementation with these three elements in place:
- A regular practice: Chaos sessions should be part of sprint cycles, not just one-off experiments.
- Cross-functional: Ops, security, and product teams should be involved to ensure findings lead to actionable improvements.
- Tied to KPIs: Success should be measured through MTTR reductions, lower incident rates, and improved recovery times.
The goal isn’t just to “break things” for the sake of it—it’s to proactively improve system resilience and team preparedness.
CIOs don’t just need stable systems—they need resilient systems. That means preparing for failure before it happens, equipping teams with the ability to diagnose and fix issues rapidly, and ensuring that engineering isn’t just about writing clean code, but about understanding how and why systems fail.
By reframing pair programming as a tool for resilience, organizations can turn chaos into a competitive advantage—reducing downtime, improving recovery times, and ultimately strengthening the foundation of their digital operations.
Leigh Bryant
Editorial Director, Composable.com
Leigh Bryant is a seasoned content and brand strategist with over a decade of experience in digital storytelling. Starting in retail before shifting to the technology space, she has spent the past ten years crafting compelling narratives as a writer, editor, and strategist.