How much longer does TDD takes?

When I introduce TDD to new people, one of the first question they ask is "how longer does it take?". Dale has a nice post about the real answer to this. To sum up his post the answer is that when taking everything into consideration doing TDD makes development goes faster. this can be backed up by several case studies (found here) The one thing to add to this is that like any new skill, at start it does take longer. I remember that for me it felt I was going so slowly that in times I thought about forsaking it altogether. (for me the turning point was when I started to feel the power of higher quality but that's another subject) Point is that if you're now evaluating TDD take into consideration a learning curve that will take a few month but at the end doing TDD just make things go fast...

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Posted in: AUT,TDD

Signs of a Death March

A "Death March" project is a project which is destined to fail. The term "death march" in this context was discussed at length in Edward Yourdon's book Death March: The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving 'Mission Impossible' Projects. I had the "pleasure" of leading a death march project and for me it was one of the most depressing experiences I had so far. In my case the death march was caused by the wrong decision to commit to an impossible schedule to get a funding for the project. We all knew the schedule was unrealistic but we thought that its better to get the money now and worry later. It goes against the notion of "Fail Fast" but at that time I was unaware of this notion. (Actually I've learnt about the whole death march thing only after the project was terminated)....

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Posted in: ALM,Random Thoughts,Self Improvment

How to Mock a Static Method

More and more i encounter places and people that still insists that static methods cant be mocked and therefore makes unit testing code which uses them harder. Here's a very short example on how a static method CAN be mocked using the proper toolset in .Net, Java and C++. The ability to mock static methods is part of the mocking libraries I am using (Isolator for .Net, PowerMock for Jave and MockItNow for C++). Design wise, I do NOT claim that using static methods is a good practice. In fact I am NOT a design expert, and therefore I don't have any sort of claim on what are good design practice and what are bad design practice. What I do claim is that unit tests can be written to code even if it does use static methods. In all the examples I'll be using a class which looks something like...

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Posted in: C++,Java,Mocking,tips,Typemock,Unit Tests

SCRUM Video

A new (well relatively new) video prepared by Hamid from Axosoft does an excellent job at introducing SCRUM. Its a little less then 10 minutes, and fun to watch. There's also a blog post on its making which I found to be interesting....

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Posted in: Scrum

Waterfoolish

Looking back at the previous post, I really like the term. I'm sure it would come handy I wonder if I can make this one stick...

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Posted in: Random Thoughts,Terminology

Zephyr - Another Test management system

About a week ago I was approached by a guy from Zephyr company which develops The World's Most Flexible Test Management System. Apparently they stumbled upon this blog (which is about testing) and since they just release a new version of their software tool they thought it might be a good idea to let me review it and say a few words about it. Well since they asked so nicely, I took some time and looked into it. a moment of honesty, everything that follows is based on a very short and initial impression that I got from seeing their demo and browsing through there site. but anyway... The Good On the good side I must admit that on the visual side they look very good. The general look and feel of the tool are good and the ability to change skins (which I did find a little out of place)...

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Posted in: ALM,Test management,tools

VB .NET Mocking

Typemock has released a new version yesterday (5.2) in which they included a new API for VB developers. unlike previous version this time the VB API was specially planned and designed in VB, for VB developers. Hopefully using special constructs of the VB language will result in an easier and more intuitive API. With my limited experience using the VB language i cant say I can be a good judge for that. For blogger's out there, Typemock is also offering a chance to win a free license you can check it out here. beside the VB API the new version also continue on improving the C# AAA syntax adding to it capabilities such as true indexers, better repeating mechanisms and some more. One important thing to watch out from, is that default mock creation has changed (taken from Typemock Blog): ...

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Posted in: AUT,Mocking,tools,Typemock,Unit Tests