Experience Test Driven Development for Testers!

Get a hands-on experience of test driven development in a safe atmosphere

Unit testing and TDD are somewhat of a grey area for tester involvement. On the one hand - these are tools used by developers to document, check and design code. On the other hand - we know that test design techniques are relevant and useful for unit testing and TDD (what data are we using? Are my tests independent? What should I check? Are they testing too much? Are they even actually testing something?! Do… do they have an assert?). It also makes sense for testers to know what the unit tests are actually checking - so that they don’t unnecessarily duplicate tests at other levels or don’t have false trust in some mystical, unknown tests. And tester involvement in design through TDD can help catch problems before they become code, as well as provide test ideas and uncover risks to be explored. In short, it can make sense to involve both the tester perspective to achieve better results than each person could do alone and to produce high quality artefacts. In terms of whole team quality, we see this as a great move! If unit tests and test driven development a mystery that you would like to learn more about to improve your skills in talking to developers, deciding where risks should be addressed with automation, and perhaps even helping out with good unit tests, then join Oli and Alex in this hands-on workshop to take your first steps with test driven development. After a quick introduction to TDD and unit testing as concepts, we’ll jump into an example where you’ll see how your tester brain and questions are already well primed to think about tests on the unit level. After that, we’ll work together on an example where we will start from scratch and write unit tests before writing code, so you can experience the steps and magic of TDD first hand. This workshop is specifically aimed at beginners – no prior knowledge of unit testing of TDD is required. You don’t have to be able to program – Oli and Alex will do that for you! All you need is logical thinking skills and a desire to learn and experience! Participants will take away an understanding of how TDD works, the power of it, and the benefits of having unit tests to document thoughts, requirements and assumptions. They will be more capable of discussing with developers which tests can be automated where, and will feel comfortable assisting with test ideas at the unit level.