Notes from a Tool User

Test Driven Development vs "Plain Old Unit Testing"

Scruffy Looking Cat Herder (aka Jacob Proffitt) recently wrote Test Driven Development considered harmful. Jacob is writing about why he believes that TDD zealots have caused people to skip unit testing altogether. I allege that Jacob is missing the boat here. 

The gist of Jacob’s hypothesis has five points which I summarize: 

1. Unit testing provides benefits when used regularly. 
2. Ensuring that developers write unit tests is the prime benefit of test driven development. 
3. Most unit test advocates are also TDD proponents. 
4. Looking for information on Unit Testing? You’re most likely to find a piece encouraging you to test first. 
5. Many developers skip Unit Testing altogether because TDD seemed too hard or too much of a change.

Solve your Task Estimation problem in Scrum

I'm often asked about improving the estimates of task hours generated during planning meetings. Years of waterfall development have taught us - if we improve the estimates we will do a much better job of tracking the sprint progress.

When this comes up I like to ask two questions:

• why estimate task size at all?
• what value do we gain improving our project tracking?