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Presentation

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Manager's Introduction to Test-Driven Development

Presented by Dave Nicolette and Karl Scotland on Nov 27, 2008

Community
Agile
Topics
Adopting Agile
Tags
TDD ,
agile2008 ,
Management ,
Value & Metrics
Summary
Dave Nicolette and Karl Scotland try to introduce non-technical managers to one of the most popular Agile development techniques: Test-Driven Development (TDD). The presentation intends to be a primer for managers who want to understand the value of TDD, and of Agile in general, in software development.

Bio
An IT professional since 1977, Dave has been a dedicated practitioner and ardent proponent of change toward Agile and Lean thinking and practices since 2002. Karl is a versatile software practitioner with a wide range of skills, including development, project management, team leadership, coaching and training.

About the conference
Agile 2008 is an exciting international industry conference that presents the latest techniques, technologies, attitudes and first-hand experience, from both a management and development perspective, for successful Agile software development.

Related Sponsor

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. Companies such as Adobe, BBC, CNN, Dow, HP, IBM, Sony and 3M have turned to VersionOne to help deliver greater value to their customers.

Shoddy and Lame by Bob Marshall Posted Dec 4, 2008 3:27 AM
Re: Shoddy and Lame by Ole Friis Posted Dec 4, 2008 12:13 PM
Re: Shoddy and Lame by Rafael Guedes Posted Dec 10, 2008 3:00 PM
Original exercise by Ole Friis Posted Dec 4, 2008 11:16 AM
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    Shoddy and Lame

    Dec 4, 2008 3:27 AM by Bob Marshall

    Poor video production, poorly prepared speakers, and misses the central point of TDD - its role as a design tool.

    Shameful.

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    Original exercise

    Dec 4, 2008 11:16 AM by Ole Friis

    For those who want to see what inspired the two guys:

    www.clarkeching.com/2006/04/test_driven_dev.html

    Personally, though, I think the exercise is too technical for managers, and it's actually a great example of TDD not automatically giving you a neat solution without a lot of sweat (which is how reality works sometimes, unfortunately :-) )...

    I once saw a very convincing presentation of RSpec by Aslak Hellesøy, and I sat next to a very non-technical colleague. She got really excited about TDD (or, rather, BDD) from the presentation, so I think RSpec is a much better platform for such a presentation than Excel/VBScript. Your opinion may differ.

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    Re: Shoddy and Lame

    Dec 4, 2008 12:13 PM by Ole Friis

    I don't agree. I actually think Karl and Dave give pretty good arguments for managers - remember, the target audience is managers, not us technicians. But even though I'm a technician, I can still use the points from the presentation, as I often have to deal with managers and convince them that TDD is the right thing to do.

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    Re: Shoddy and Lame

    Dec 10, 2008 3:00 PM by Rafael Guedes

    Great presentation! Congratulations!

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