Here are the slides (as a PDF file) for the Intro to Test-Driven Development speech that I gave at the SCQAA meeting last night. I haven’t seen the speaker feedback forms yet, but based on the comments from people walking up to me afterwards, it was an effective speech. In particular, everyone loved my grand experiment to demonstrate TDD — without requiring any programming knowledge — by having the audience break up into teams and write limericks test-driven.
If enjoyed this speech, then you might also be interested in materials from other speeches that I’ve given in the past. You can find them on the Downloads page.
I really enjoyed the exercise. It’s a great way to help non-developers get a feel for the driving nature of “tests”.
It also illustrated that you can follow a process and still get low-quality output: it still takes some thoughtful creativity to get there. (The limerick my group came up with was pretty crummy).
FYI: I ran this exercise again for a few people at an Agile Open Space conference that was just held in Irvine. The feedback I got afterwards was interesting: (1) that maybe writing a limerick is too involved and perhaps a less “clever” form of poetry might be easier to work with — like a Haiku. (2) That having all of the tests pre-written and pre-ordered actually goes against TDD, although it may still be valid as an exercise, but that fact at least ought to be pointed out. (3) If sticking to the limerick exercise, consider switching the order of tests 1 & 2. (4) No matter what type of poetry, it’s difficult to start with a blank page, so have a way to randomly suggest a topic or situation. (5) Consider passing the work around round-robin-style with no one taking ownership of any particular outcome, so that everyone is more focused on the process.