Why Your TDD Initiative Will Fail

Before you go all-in on TDD, read this first

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If you're someone pushing for clean code, unit testing, and TDD in your company, I was exactly in your shoes. Here's what happened: Even when I succeeded in convincing people to adopt these practices, there were NO visible results.

From an executive perspective, nothing in the metrics that actually mattered changed. Let's break down why.

Why TDD Failed (At First)

In a big code base, introducing unit testing is a HUGE effort. Legacy code is tangled. You have to:

• Separate business logic from I/O logic

• Add interfaces and abstractions

• Face massive developer resistance

And after all that work, what do executives see? Absolutely nothing. You might get:

• 100% code coverage in small isolated parts

• Beautiful, elegant code

• Good usage of design patterns

But from a business perspective? No reduction in delivery time. No reduction in regression bugs.

The Lesson: Don’t Start with TDD. Start with ATDD.

The game-changer? ATDD (Acceptance Test-Driven Development). Instead of starting with unit tests, start with acceptance tests. Convert user story acceptance criteria directly into acceptance tests. Let developers write code with the goal of making the acceptance tests pass. Retroactively cover base functionality.

The results?

• Reduce regression bugs

• Speed up delivery time

• Minimal developer resistance

• Management actually sees improvement

This is how you create real, visible change.

Want to Learn How?

Want the full roadmap? I'm hosting a workshop breaking down exactly how to implement this. I’ll show you how to align the team regarding requirements and eliminate manual QA regression testing, so that you’ll reduce delivery time and reduce regression bugs.

🚀Join me on Wed 6th Aug (17:00 - 19:00 CEST), I’m hosting ATDD in Legacy Code Roadmap (Live Workshop). During this workshop you’ll learn:

1. Why ATDD will reduce software delivery time and reduce regression bugs, by aligning the team regarding requirements & replacing manual regression testing

2. How to introduce ATDD in Legacy Code in an incremental way, while still keeping up with existing feature delivery

3. How to convince Engineering Managers, Software Engineers and QA Engineers to adopt ATDD in Legacy Code

Let's transform your development process together!

P.S. Regular price: $97 (free access for Optivem Journal paid subscribers - see event description for details)