I've been posting more on LinkedIn these days.  Short little nuggets about TDD that people really seem to respond to.  It's all out there if you want to read it, just look for my name on LinkedIn. Anyway, I did so many of these that I realized I could make a sort of lightweight handbook out of them, for the the practitioner why just wants to sharpen his or her TDD skills.  So I

Having established the differences between ATDD and UTDD, how are they the same? Why are they both called “TDD” collectively? Tests ensure a detailed and specific, shared understanding of behavior. If properly trained, those who create these tests will subject their knowledge to a rigorous and unforgiving standard; it is hard if not impossible to create a high-quality test about something

I realized recently that this had been written, but never published.  Part 1 was, but never this second part.  Not sure how that happened.  Maybe I needed a test. :) Anyway, here it is.  Part three is still pending. -Scott-  Expanding the thesis Our central thesis thus far has centered on the notion that TDD is not really about testing, it is really about

Both ATDD and UTDD are automatable. The difference has to do with the role of such automation, how critical and valuable it is, and when the organization should put resources into creating it. AUTOMATION ATDD ATDD’s value comes primarily from the deep collaboration it engenders, and the shared understanding that comes from this effort.  The health of the organization in general, and

Introduction A question that often arises in our consulting and training practices concerns the relationship between Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Acceptance-Test-Driven Development (ATDD).  Which is “really” TDD, and which should an organization focus on in terms of which comes first, and which should achieve the most attention and resources? It’s not uncommon for someone to refer to

This will be a quickie.  But sometimes good things come in small packages. This idea came to us from Amir's good friend Eran Pe'er, when he was visiting Net Objectives from his home in Israel. I'd like you to imagine something, then I'm going to ask you a question.  Once I ask the question you'll see a horizontal line of dashes.  Stop reading at that point and really try to

Increasingly, in modern software development, we create software using components that are provided as part of a language, framework, or other element of an overall development ecosystem.  In test-driven development this can potentially cause difficulties because our code becomes dependent on components that we did not create, that may not be amenable to our testing approaches, and that the

This post is not about TDD per se, but rather a context in which TDD can demonstrate its place in and contribution to the value stream.  This context has to do with the 6 things that we must accomplish (do) and the 8 skills that the team must have in order to accomplish them.  We'll describe each "do", noting where and if TDD has an impact, and then do the same thing with the skills. 6