InfoQ Homepage Presentations Manager's Introduction to Test-Driven Development
Manager's Introduction to Test-Driven Development
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.
Community comments
Shoddy and Lame
by Bob Marshall,
Re: Shoddy and Lame
by Ole Friis,
Re: Shoddy and Lame
by Rafael Guedes,
Re: Shoddy and Lame
by clarke ching,
Original exercise
by Ole Friis,
Shoddy and Lame
by Bob Marshall,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
Poor video production, poorly prepared speakers, and misses the central point of TDD - its role as a design tool.
Shameful.
Original exercise
by Ole Friis,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
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.
Re: Shoddy and Lame
by Ole Friis,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
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.
Re: Shoddy and Lame
by Rafael Guedes,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
Great presentation! Congratulations!
Re: Shoddy and Lame
by clarke ching,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
Bob wrote:
> Poor video production, poorly prepared speakers, and misses the central point of TDD - its role as a design tool.
Bob, to be quite blunt: your comment was rude, thoughtless and unhelpful.
Clarke