testdriven.com Wrangling quality out of chaos

A "webinar" in which Max Guernsey (subby) presents transition testing as a key element of agile database development.
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Many people assume that agile methods mean an absence of design. Design still happens in agile projects, but it shifts from an up-front phase to a continual evolution. Design decisions should be left to the last responsible moment, but some design decisions do need to be made at the start of a project. At the last QCon, Martin Fowler explored this topic through a panel discussion of design in an agile context.

Presentator: Floyd Marinescu
Presented: QCon London, October 18, 2007
Duration: 58 mn
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Talk about Test Driven Development and how to implement Design By Contract in the Ruby programming language.

Author: Jim Weirich
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Slides from a Code Mash presentation on Test Driven Development in Python. They provide an introduction to TDD, some tools that work well when doing TDD in python, and the results of a case study in TDD game development using pygame.

Author: Kevin Dahlhausen
Posted: January 22, 2007
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In the fourth edition of the Stelligent Early Quality Podcast series, Paul Duvall and Levent Gurses discuss how Continuous Integration can be simplified with two popular tools: CruiseControl and Maven 2.

If you’re looking to intensify your CI and testing process and want to learn more about how these tools can help, this podcast will be a valuable resource for you.
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We raise four software development issues and show how Fit can be used to address them. The issues are as follows: (1) How can we improve test coverage on a legacy system without discouraging its evolution? (2) Now that we have a successful product with a great UI, how do we provide program access, such as through SOAP? (3) How can QA be involved earlier and more effectively? (4) How can product managers better utilise their expertise?

Each of these issues can be addressed with Fit storytests. Storytests satisfy the demands of both requirements and quality assurance, in an amalgam that initially looks weird and counter-intuitive. Storytests are concrete examples that express important things about the business domain and about the system. They are matched and generalised in the code, using the same "ubiquitous language". Week by week, as thinking and understanding grow and change, the storytests grow and change. And so the code evolves.

Presentator: Rick Mugridge
Presented: Google TechTalk, February 9, 2006
Duration: 54mn
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Data is clearly an important aspect of software-based systems, a fact that the information technology (IT) industry has understood for decades, yet many agile development teams are struggling to involve data professionals within their projects. The Agile Data (AD) methodology (agiledata.org) defines a philosophical framework for data-oriented activities within agile projects, defining ways that application developers and data professionals can work together effectively. However, philosophy isn’t enough, you also need proven techniques which support those philosophies. In this presentation Scott Ambler discusses techniques for agile database development, including: database refactoring, Agile-Model Driven Development (AMDD), Test-Driven Design (TDD), and environment/tool strategies.

Presentator: Scott Ambler
Presented: XP West, Michigan, February 27th, 2006
Duration: 1h 50mn
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"In this session we’ll dive into a world where the system is built and run on a daily basis, and even on an hourly basis. We’ll discuss Tools and Libraries that help you get there with VS 2003, 2005 and Team System. Even with Express tools – it’s all possible, and easier than you think."

Presentator: Roy Osherove
Recorded: TechEd Europe, 2006
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Carl and Richard talk with Venkat Subramaniam, who has had a string of successful dnrTV episodes, and Andrew Hunt about Agile dos and dont’s. Agile Methodology can be overwhelming, and these guys introduce a much-needed dose of reality.

Date: December 5, 2006
Presented: .NET Rocks
Duration: 1 h 13 mn
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Ron Jeffries’ upcoming book looks at how tracking "Running Tested Features" is the essential element of Agility, from which all other practices and activities necessarily follow. Deborah Hartmann interviews Ron who takes to the whiteboard to explain how, when supported by XP’s "simple design" practice, RTF helps teams deliver consistently without building up costly technical debt.

Presentator: Ron Jeffries
Posted: InfoQ, November 30, 2006
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Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber spoke at Agile2006 on code quality as a corporate asset. InfoQ presents video of his talk, The Canary in the Coalmine. Schwaber discussed how a degrading core codebase paralyses a team and negates any Agility gained through process improvement. He proposed strategies for management to identify, track and stop this downward spiral.

Presentator: Ken Schwaber
Presented: November 2006
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What is code quality exactly? You may not know how to define it, but you know it when you see it. One thing is sure, though, high code quality usually correlates to fewer defects. Ensuring the quality of your Java code is a two-step process: write tests at all levels, early and often; and continually monitor quality metrics. Andrew Glover brings his considerable expertise as a consultant focused on improving code quality to this moderated chat.

Date: November 17, 2006
Hosted by: IBM developerWorks
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Test Driven Development (TDD) has become quite well known. Many developers are getting benefit from the practice. But it is possible that we can get even more value. A new practice is getting attention these days: Behaviour Driven Development (BDD).

BDD removes all vestiges of testing and instead focuses on specifying the behaviour desired in the system being built. This talk will be focus on Ruby and will introduce a new BDD framework: rSpec. The ideas, however, are language independent.

Author: Dave Astels
Presented: Google TechTalks, March 17, 2006
Duration: 48 mn
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A series of 33 slides on refactoring, its usefulness, and its role in Agile development. With an example presenting how to refactor in small steps.

Authors: Sven Gorts & Hans Keppens
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21 simple slides to get started with TDD using JUnit.

Author: Jason Gorman
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"Selenium being driven from JUnit is my preferred mode of operation. I’ve made a movie of Selenium testing the PetSoar app under JUnit control. The other mode ‘standalone’ or ‘in-browser’, is the original mode of operation. It has to be said that the driven mode is a little slower, but I prefer it greatly as I think it overcomes some glass ceilings I perceive with the other. [..] It is from the next version of Selenium, which should be 0.4, testing the ‘PetSoar’ app from Joe Walnes’ (and friends) Java Open Source Programming book."

Author: Paul Hammant
Published: May 7, 2005
Format: Quicktime, 10Mb
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Test driven development has become a more widely practiced programming ritual as much as it is a movement for encorporating quality control measures into the normal development process. While tools like JUnit have made TDD at the unit level easy to implement and automate, testing at the integration level especially for Swing applications has long been overly complicated and often abandoned for manual processes. Several open source projects aim to simplify integration testing for Swing applications, some through script recording and playback mechanisms others with programmable APIs. Arguably one of the most robust and full-featured is the Jemmy testing toolkit – originally developed by the NetBeans IDE development team as a means of independantly testing their development platform, Jemmy provides APIs for testing all GUI aspects of JFC/Swing applications. This presentation describes the Jemmy API, how to integrate with JUnit, and will provide several demonstrations of its integration testing capabilities for Swing/JFC applications.

Author: Mario Aquino, OCI
Presented: March 10, 2005
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Four PowerPoint presentations by Reginald Braithwaite-Lee:

Scrum: One Person’s Perspective
Evidence-based Software Development Practices
Agile Development or Critical Chain? Yes!
Agile Methods in a Product Development Setting
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This session highlights two useful features in Visual Studio 2005 that help developers improve the performance and quality of their software. Learn how the built-in profiler monitors the execution of a running program and generates detailed reports on the application’s behavior that can be used to identify those bottlenecks that most affect the program’s performance. We will also show how to take advantage of the support for test-driven development in Visual Studio 2005 to ensure that you are preserving the integrity of your existing code as you enhance or extend your solutions.

Presented: Friday, February 18, 2005
Presenter: David Waddleton

Full title:
MSDN Webcast: Debugging and Tweaking Week (5/5): Test Driven Development with Visual Studio 2005
(Requires registration)
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Slides on Test-Driven Development, taken from several course presentations by Graham Roberts, Computer Science Department tutor at University College London, and co-author of "Developing Java Software".
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The software industry is shifting from large-scale, prescriptive processes that mandate rigorous procedures and policies to lighter, more agile methodologies. Are these agile processes appropriate for your organization? If so, which should you consider adopting? What challenges can you expect and how can you overcome them?

In this presentation, Scott Ambler describes and contrasts the leading agile methodologies, including Crystal Light, eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Dynamic System Development Method, Feature Driven Development, and Agile Modeling. He also discusses the possibility of tailoring an agile instantiation of the Rational Unified Process (RUP).

Presented: SDForum, March 27, 2003
Length: 1h55
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A lecture given by Roy Osherove about the basics of Test Driven Development with Microsoft .Net.

Note that the lecture is in Hebrew. The lecture discusses the basics of unit testing and the difference between regular unit testing and Test Driven Development. It also shows the basic usage of Nunit

Speaker: Roy Osherove (blog)
Presented: November 25, 2004
Duration: ~1hr
Format: Windows Media Video (WMV)
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These videos cover the entirety of the SDForum Developer Testing Webcast held November 17, 2004.

Contents:

Kent Beck: Accountability and Developer Testing
- Introduction to Software Health
- Why Start with Developer Testing?
- Accountability
- Q&A

Sriram Sankar: Developer Testing at Google
- Introduction
- The Google Environment
- XP at Google
- Other Quality Initiatives at Google
- Q&A

Expert Panel: Making Developer Testing Work
With Russell Gold, Oracle; Rob Mee, Pivotal; Sri Muthu, Wells Fargo; David Vydra, Testdriven.com
- Introductions
- The Myths
- Audience Questions
- More Audience Questions
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General presentation slides on Test Driven Development.

Author: Hubert Smits
Presented: Glasgow Caledonian University lectures, 2004
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Series of slides showing how Refactoring Thumbnails are used to express the evolution of a design. Explains the sequence of high-level refactorings, and presents intermediate stages.

Author: Sven Gorts
Presented: XPDay Benelux 2004
See also: refactoring.be
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