Conference archive

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Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

Identify and Exploit Behavioral Boundaries for Unit Testing

Whether writing unit tests after coding or using test-driven development (TDD), developers often ask themselves—How much testing is enough? Or too much? Or not enough? Rob Myers helps answer these questions using the techniques from his experience doing and teaching TDD. Look for those tests that cause us to write code, look for unique behaviors and code-paths, and strive to narrow in the boundary conditions. This gives us pinpoint accuracy when something breaks. Rob demonstrates what this approach looks like using graphs, tests, and code. To answer “What needs to be tested?” Rob introduces the Hungover Intern Principle—write the tests that will defend our code’s behaviors against any mistakes during later refactoring or optimization, whether the mistakes are made by an earnest but inexperienced intern or by us. Rob shows how to do this without introducing duplicate tests.

Rob Myers
Agile Institute

The founder of Agile Institute, Rob Myers teaches courses that are always a blend of fun and practical hands-on labs, “Training From the Back of the Room” learning techniques, and relevant first-person stories from both successful and not-so-successful agile implementations. With thirty years of professional experience with software development teams, Rob has been training and coaching organizations in Scrum and Extreme Programming since 1998. He currently works with tiny start-ups and huge Fortune 100 multinationals, helping them with cultural change and essential practices from Scrum, kanban, XP, and lean.