About Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Other closely related acronyms BDD / ATDD

• somewhat similar acronyms BDD, ATDD

  • see table at the end of this article

    • https://www.browserstack.com/guide/tdd-vs-bdd-vs-atdd

• for the sake of simplicity and clarity: I'm using the acronym / term TDD

  • I'm talking about "tests that validate high-level system behaviors" : so I'm talking about BDD

    • BDD = Behavior-Driven Development ≈ TDF = Test-Driven Feature

  • I'm talking about "acceptance tests: so I'm talking about ATDD

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Why TDD?

anno domini 2014: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256848134_Effects_of_Test-Driven_Development_A_Comparative_Analysis_of_Empirical_Studies

2024 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383694705_Evaluating_the_impact_of_Test-Driven_Development_on_Software_Quality_Enhancement

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https://katalon.com/resources-center/blog/bdd-testing

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/behavioral-driven-development-bdd-in-software-engineering/

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How to do TDD?

• here's a simplified description

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A. Before starting the development of the feature

1. Manage requirements

   1. make sure requirements are relevant to business

      • JTBD

2. Pick up one requirement = the most important requirement

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B. Test-Driven Development

1. Write a short specification for the feature

   1. detailed enough so it's actionable

   2. see for example:

      1. Specification by Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specification_by_example
   3. specify acceptance criteria

2. Write the Acceptance Test Case.

3. While your Acceptance Test Case fails:

   1. Configure / Develop

   2. Test your Acceptance Test Case

4. Refactor and clean the stuff you configured / created.

5. Run your Acceptance Test Cases.

   • to make sure that your stuff works after cleaning

6. Run Regression Test Suites.

   • to make sure that nothing got broken in development

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C. After successful Development

1. Add your Acceptance Test Case to Regression Test Suite.

2. Deploy your solution to production.

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Try TDD/TDF/BDD/SDD with testRigor

1. Write a specification for your Use Case

   • given when then

   • SBE "Specification by Example"

2. Create Test Case in testRigor for the new feature as per Use Case specification

3. Run the Test Case

   • of course it fails as you haven't developed / configured the feature

4. Develop / configure the feature

   • Keep on running the Test Case(s) until it passes

5. Polish the artefacts you have created or modified

   • Run the Test Case(s) once again

   • Run your Development Regression Test Suite

6. Deploy your changes

   • Run your Production Test Suite

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Further learning

Uncle Bob

• The Cycles of TDD

• https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/12/17/TheCyclesOfTDD.html

Dave Farley

• Youtube channel: Continuos Delivery

  • https://www.youtube.com/@ContinuousDelivery
• Book: "Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster (2022)

  • https://a.co/d/8H0E1hj
• Website:

  • https://continuous-delivery.co.uk/