The effect of experience on the test-driven development process

Müller, Matthias; Höfer, Andreas

doi:10.1007/s10664-007-9048-2

Cited by 42 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Experience of the developers in general seems to be a factor in explaining how individual developers work and how well they're able to adhere to the test-driven development process [22,27]. Students who are more unfamiliar with the concept might not be able to achieve as high a coverage as their industry peers [29].…”

Section: Code Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Madeyski and Szała found in a quasi-controlled experiment that there was less code per user story when the developer was designing and implementing the stories with test-driven development [21]. Müller and Höfer conclude from an experiment that test-driven developers with less experience don't necessarily create test code which has a larger code footprint but there might be some differences in the size of the non-test code in favor of the experts [22].…”

Section: Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Müller and Höfer [22] examined the productivity rates when experts and students were developing code in a test-driven development experiment and noticed that both experts and students wrote test code faster than they wrote the implementation code. Experts were generally faster in writing code than students but both groups of developers wrote test code three times faster reaching maximum rates of 150 lines of code per hour.…”

Section: Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Effects of Test-Driven Development: A Comparative Analysis of Empirical Studies

Mäkinen

Münch

2014

Software Quality. Model-Based Approaches for Advanced Software and Systems Engineering

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Abstract. Test-driven development is a software development practice where small sections of test code are used to direct the development of program units. Writing test code prior to the production code promises several positive effects on the development process itself and on associated products and processes as well. However, there are few comparative studies on the effects of test-driven development. Thus, it is difficult to assess the potential process and product effects when applying testdriven development. In order to get an overview of the observed effects of test-driven development, an in-depth review of existing empirical studies was carried out. The results for ten different internal and external quality attributes indicate that test-driven development can reduce the amount of introduced defects and lead to more maintainable code. Parts of the implemented code may also be somewhat smaller in size and complexity. While maintenance of test-driven code can take less time, initial development may last longer. Besides the comparative analysis, this article sketches related work and gives an outlook on future research.

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Section: Code Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effects of Test-Driven Development: A Comparative Analysis of Empirical Studies

Mäkinen

Münch

2014

Software Quality. Model-Based Approaches for Advanced Software and Systems Engineering

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“…Unfortunately, this threat is often neglected in experimentation in software engineering, even though this is a serious threat, especially in the case of the TF programming practice, which can be difficult to follow. Wang and Erdogmus [84], Madeyski and Sza la [35], as well and Müller and Höfer [85] raised the issue of process conformance in the context of the TF experimentation recently. Process conformance threat was addressed by taking several precautions.…”

Section: Validity Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of Test-First programming on branch coverage and mutation score indicator of unit tests: An experiment

Madeyski

2010

Information and Software Technology

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Background : Test-First programming is regarded as one of the software development practices that can make unit tests to be more rigorous, thorough and effective in fault detection. Code coverage measures can be useful as indicators of the thoroughness of unit test suites, while mutation testing turned out to be effective at finding faults. Objective: This paper presents an experiment in which Test-First vs TestLast programming practices are examined with regard to branch coverage and mutation score indicator of unit tests. Method : Student subjects were randomly assigned to Test-First and TestLast groups. In order to further reduce pre-existing differences among subjects, and to get a more sensitive measure of our experimental effect, multivariate analysis of covariance was performed. Results: Multivariate tests results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between Test-First and Test-Last practices on the combined dependent variables, i.e. branch coverage and mutation score indicator, (F (2, 9) = .52, p > .05), even if we control for the pre-test results, the subjects' experience, and when the subjects who showed deviations from the assigned programming technique are excluded from the analysis. Conclusion: According to the preliminary results presented in this paper, the benefits of the Test-First practice in this specific context can be considered minor. Limitation: It is probably the first-ever experimental evaluation of the impact of Test-First programming on mutation score indicator of unit tests and further experimentation is needed to establish evidence.

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“…Perception on TDD was more positive after the experiment. Müller & Höfer [14] 2007 Academic Mixed AIM: To investigate the conformance to TDD of professionals and novice TDD developers. RESULTS: Experts complied more to the rules of TDD and produced test with higher quality.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Test Design Technique Knowledge on Test Driven Development: A Controlled Experiment

Čaušević

Sundmark

Punnekkat

2012

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Abstract. Agile development approaches are increasingly being followed and favored by the industry. Test Driven Development (TDD) is a key agile practice and recent research results suggest that the successful adoption of TDD depends on different limiting factors, one of them being insufficient developer testing skills. The goal of this paper is to investigate if developers who are educated on general testing knowledge will be able to utilize TDD more effectively. We conducted a controlled experiment with master students during the course on Software Verification & Validation (V&V) where source code and test cases created by each participant during the labs as well as their answers on a survey questionnaire were collected and analyzed. Descriptive statistics indicate improvements in statement coverage. However, no statistically significant differences could be established between the pre-and post-course groups of students. By qualitative analysis of students' tests, we noticed a lack of test cases for non-stated requirements ("negative"tests) resulting in a non-detection of bugs. Students did show preference towards TDD in surveys. Although further research is required to fully establish this, we believe that identifying specific testing knowledge which is complementary to the testing skills of a new TDD developer would enable developers to perform their tasks in a more efficient manner.

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The effect of experience on the test-driven development process

Cited by 42 publications

References 10 publications

Effects of Test-Driven Development: A Comparative Analysis of Empirical Studies

Effects of Test-Driven Development: A Comparative Analysis of Empirical Studies

The impact of Test-First programming on branch coverage and mutation score indicator of unit tests: An experiment

Impact of Test Design Technique Knowledge on Test Driven Development: A Controlled Experiment

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