Test Driven Development is widely used for Agile Development that relies on very short development cycles.

1. Test Driven Development - All You Need to Know About
Test Driven Development is widely used for Agile Development that relies on very short
development cycles. Agile development is basically an evolutionary approach to
development where the developer writes a failing automated test case that defines a
desired improvement or new function, then produces code to pass that test and finally
refactors the new code to acceptable standards.
The basic steps followed to achieve Test Driven Development are mentioned below
Identify and analyze what is required to achieve:
Analysis of ‘what’ is to be achieved is an important aspect for starting the activity. It
involves a lot of pre-assessments and in-depth understanding. The time and effort spent
on this activity greatly influences the budget of the program. As development advances
the analysis done initially become more and more valuable as many functionalities get
added to the existing code on top of the existing code.
Create a test that will fail:
Write the test as if the code already exists. This will ensure that the code fails at all
times. But this is a meaningful failure that is used to achieve a desired functionality and
it is always expected to fail
Write code that will pass:
Now as the test is identified that has already failed then develop the code such that the
test will pass. Keeping the code simple and independent is an essential aspect while
creating the code. Once sure that the code is written sufficiently correct that the failing
test will pass, proceed to running all the earlier tests that have passed to ensure that the
existing code is not impacted by addition of the new code.
Refactor the code:
Once completely satisfied, identify the repetition and update the code to optimize it.
Crudely written code needs to be upgraded to smart, smooth and flawless code. Once
done rerun all the passing tests that will ensure that they still pass as before and code
changes have not disturbed any of the existing functionalities. Proceed in this way till the
required is achieved
Benefits of Test Driven Development can be highlighted as below
- Debugging of the code is highly reduced
- This approach drives the design of the program as this includes pre-assessment and in-
depth understanding of the achievement
- Because of the step-by-step approach the code becomes shorter, manageable and be
easily maintained.
- Modularization is increased with reduction in the interdependencies so a lesser chance
of untoward errors occurring.
- The test cases written and completed get very thorough developed automatically.
- Shortcomings of the Test Driven Development approach.
- Test Driven Development falls short where full functional tests are required to

2. determine the success or failures.
- The quality and the coverage of the Unit tests indirectly determine the project budget
and the maintainability.
- Heavily relying on the unit tests may possibly have impacts on the integration aspects.
- Without the proper structure of implementation the efforts spent using this approach
themselves become a burden on the organization.
- Add on functional testing services and performance-testing services from various
departments will have to be brought in to the cycle to achieve complete coverage.
The article above is a bird’s view of the Test Driven Development Approach. Also
discussed are the benefits and shortcomings for the same. It is left on individual
discretion to weight the pros and cons against the development approach feasible enough
to achieve maximum benefits.
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