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    Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

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    Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

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    Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

    Uploaded by

    jai Jee

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 4

    3/18/23, 7:05 PM Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

    © 2023 Scaled Agile, Inc. All rights reserved.

    https://scaledagileframework.com/test-driven-development/ 1/4
    3/18/23, 7:05 PM Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

    “ We never have enough time for testing, so


    let’s just write the test first.

    —Kent Beck

    Test-Driven Development

    Note: This article is part of Extended SAFe Guidance and represents official SAFe content that
    cannot be accessed directly from the Big Picture.

    Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a philosophy and practice that involves building and executing tests
    before implementing the code or a system component. By validating them against a series of agreed-to
    tests, TDD—an Agile Testing practice—improves system outcomes by ensuring the system
    implementation meets its requirements. TDD and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) are part of the
    ‘test-first’ approach to achieving Built-in Quality. Writing tests first creates a more balanced testing
    approach with many fast, automated development tests and fewer slow, manual, end-to-end tests. (See
    the Built-in Quality section of the Team and Technical Agility article for more detail on the testing
    pyramid and a balanced testing portfolio.)

    Details
    Kent Beck and others have defined a set of Extreme Programming (XP) practices under the umbrella label
    of TDD [1]. Figure 1 illustrates the process:

    1. Write a test

    2. Run all tests


    5. Refactor as
    and observe
    necessary
    failure

    4. Run all tests


    3. Write code
    and observe
    to pass tests
    pass

    https://scaledagileframework.com/test-driven-development/ 2/4
    3/18/23, 7:05 PM Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

    © Scaled Agile, Inc.

    English
    Figure 1. The Test-Driven Development process

    Write the test first, ensuring that the developer understands the required behavior. This could
    be a new test or a modification of an existing test.
    Run the test and watch it fail. Because there’s no code yet, this may seem pointless. Still, it
    accomplishes two practical objectives: it verifies the test works, including any testing harnesses,
    and demonstrates how the system will behave if the code is incorrect.
    Write the minimum amount of code needed to pass the test. If it fails, rework the code or the
    test until it passes routinely.
    Continue implementing new code until all tests pass. This step gives the developer confidence
    that their changes meet the current requirements and haven’t created an error in another part
    of the system.
    Refactor as necessary to ensure the design aligns with changing requirements (for example,
    emergent design). Developers continually update their designs to ensure that evolving
    requirements and a growing codebase don’t lead to poor code quality.

    In XP, this practice was designed primarily to operate in the context of unit tests, developer-written tests
    (also a form of code) that evaluate the classes and methods used. These are a form of ‘white-box testing’
    because they test the internals of the system and the various code paths. To help assure high quality,
    developers work in pairs to create the code and tests, providing multiple perspectives and a built-in peer
    review. Even when not developed in pairs, the tests give another set of eyes that review the code.

    A rich set of unit tests ensure that refactoring efforts do not introduce new errors, allowing developers to
    improve their designs continuously. Refactoring builds quality in by enabling designs to emerge over
    time, supporting the solution’s changing requirements.

    Unit Tests

    TDD creates a large set of developer-level tests, which allows Quality Assurance (QA) and test personnel
    to focus on other testing challenges. Instead of spending time finding and reporting code-level bugs, they
    can focus on more complex behaviors and interactions between components.

    The open-source community has built unit testing frameworks to cover most languages, including Java, C,
    C#, C++, XML, HTTP, Python, and others. There are unit-testing frameworks for most coding
    environments a developer is likely to encounter. Unit testing frameworks provide a harness for the
    development and maintenance of unit tests and for automatically executing them against the system.

    With TDD, testing, and code are written together and occur within the same Iteration. As a result, the
    regression test automation for unit tests is mostly free for the team. Unit testing is a cornerstone of
    software agility. Investing in comprehensive unit testing improves quality and productivity.

    Component Tests

    Teams also use tests to evaluate larger-scale components of the system. Many of these are in various
    architectural layers, providing services needed by Features or other modules. Testing tools and practices
    https://scaledagileframework.com/test-driven-development/ 3/4
    3/18/23, 7:05 PM Advanced Topic - Test-Driven Development - Scaled Agile Framework

    for implementing component tests vary. For example, testing frameworks can hold complicated unit tests
    written in the development language (for example, Java, C, C#, and so on). This allows many teams to
    build component tests using their unit testing frameworks. They may not even consider their separate
    functions, as it’s merely part of their testing strategy. In other cases, developers may incorporate other
    testing tools or write entirely customized tests in any language or environment that is productive for
    them to test broader system behaviors. These tests are also automated to defend against unanticipated
    consequences of refactoring and new code.

    Speeding Up Testing with Test Doubles

    TDD tests exercise a relatively small part of the system, yet, each test can require significant time and
    expense to launch and set up. Also, each may require dependent components and enterprise
    infrastructure that may or may not be available immediately. ‘Test doubles’ are code constructs that
    accelerate testing by substituting slow, unavailable, or expensive components with faster proxies. TDD
    practices typically make significant use of test doubles. See the Built-in Quality article for more
    background and application information on test doubles.

    Learn More

    [1] Beck, Kent. Test-Driven Development. Addison-Wesley, 2003.

    Last update: 23 February 2023

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