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Narrator: Vanilla Pop talks to the PO about the team doing TDD.

 

Horst: How are you Vanilla Pop? Or should I refer to you as simply, rising star of the company? Ja? What is on your mind?

 

VPop: Sprint planing is tomorrow. I’ve been piloting the practice of TDD for the team and—

 

Horst: TDD is something about testing, Ja?

 

VPop: That’s right. Micro testing. So I think I’m ready to teach the whole team how to do this. But it will slow us down a little before it speeds us up.

 

(Internal voice: slow us down a little? doesn’t he know if this will work?)

 

Horst: excuse me but Isn’t Jose already Testing the app? Why do you test what Jose is already testing?

 

VPop: Well it’s different. What Jose does is macro testing. And some of it is manual. You see these automated micro tests only test if the code works, not the feature.

 

(Internal voice: test code not feature? What is this?)

 

Horst: excuse me but don’t the tests Jose write, don’t they test the code too? Ja?

 

VPop: Well yeah, but these tests each test a small piece better and respond nearly instantly when there is a bug.

 

Horst: Because Jose works too slowly?

 

VPop: Well no, his tests are slower which means we need to spend time later fixing bugs. And macro tests don’t help us locate the bugs. Only know there exists bugs.

 

Horst: But if you’re spending time now to write tests for code we are already testing, that sounds like we are over testing. I’d rather you write more functionality and let Jose handle QA.

 

VPop: It’s not like that. If all the devs do this, we could have zero bugs.

 

(Internal voice: zero did he say zero bugs? He’s gone mad!)

Horst: If All the devs did this, they would spend time adding tests for code that’s already tested instead of coding features. Nein! We must have more velocity! We need to beat the market. The business buys features! (Horst sound bite)

 

Narrator: It’s difficult to talk to non developers or QA pros about the difference between micro tests and macro tests. What’s happening here is that Vanilla Pop is trying to make a pitch to a not-developer about how to do development. This is difficult and he’s putting the product owner in a bad position. Don’t present to your Product Owner that TDD is a separable step from development. Some feel this is being evasive but it’s not. Just because TDD is new to you or you team doesn’t make it an optional step. It’s a development practice that you should have already been doing, just as you should always use good design techniques, or comment your code. Since TDD is a DEVELOPPEMENT practice, your Product Owner isn’t qualified to decide that any more than deciding between exception handling versus error code passing. Don’t put your Product Owner in that position. The every business wants features that actually work and don’t want to pay for bug fixes or have the team slow down because the code can’t be refactored. End of story.

 

Next episode we hear from the team’s tester. (Jose sound bite)