Sufficient Tests

I’ll allow up front that I am not a huge advocate of TDD. Not because I think it is bad, its good. Not because I think it is hard, although it adds abstractions to the development process that are hard for some developers to grok. Not because I think it is a waste, because even though it adds time up front, it can save double on the back end. I am not a huge advocate of TDD, simply because it has the developers writing the tests.

Over years and years of software delivery experience, as a developer, as a tester, as a project manager, a business analyst, a manager I have observed one truism. Software developers cannot be trusted to understand the requirements deeply enough to test their own code. There are too many layers of abstraction in the way.

As Seymour Cray is reported to have said,

“The problem with programmers is, you never know what they are doing until it’s too late.”