Test Driven Development - TDD Agile Project Management

Test Driven Development (TDD) refers a software development process involving the repetition of a very short development cycle. In the development cycle, the Cryptex ruby on Rails developers writes an automated test case (initially failing). In the automated test case, our developer defines a desired improvement. The developer defines a new function. In the agile test driven development process the developers’ produces the minimum amount of code in order to pass the test. Later, the written code is restructured to acceptable standards. The designer of such type of coding practice is of the opinion that it inspires confidence, encourages simple designs.

Test Driven Development

Steps Involved in TDD Cycle

The test driven development cycle incorporates a number of steps, which include the following:-

  • Add Test

    First step in the TDD cycle involves adding a test quickly, just for coding to fail.

  • See Test Fails

    Secondly, you have to run your tests i.e. either the entire test suite or simply one of its subset to view and make sure that your new test fails.

  • Write a Code

    Now, you have to write and update the functional code, so that it can easily pass new tests.

  • Run Test

    In the fourth step, you have to run your tests for one more time. In case of any failure, you have to update the code and follow the test procedure again.

  • Refactor Process

    Once you find that the test passes, you have to refactor it to avoid any kind of duplication in the design.

    In the TDD process, the growing code base often contains redundant code that requires periodic cleansing during test driven development process. If required the test driven development cycle is repeated.

Test Driven Development
Importance/Advantages of the TDD

Until now, BDD has offered countless significant benefits to organizations, which are as follows:

  • There are different aspects of using the test driven development style. For instance, it is better to keep units related to the TDD small, reduce debugging effort. Moreover, small test cases are simple to comprehend.
  • The test driven development programming process when used with a version control system, is used to revert the code to the last version that successfully passed all the tests if the tests failed. This is a more productive programming approach than debugging.
  • The TDD allows the programmer to focus on the task at hand, as the objective is to make the test a pass.



How it is used in software development

In the test driven development process related to software development process, the coding defects are limited by increasing the number of tests. Frequent testing helps to catch the defects in the development cycle preventing them to become expensive, endemic. Defect elimination in the TDD process helps to avoid tedious, lengthy debugging later. Therefore, TDD has wide applications in development process that make it popular among the users.