Format: Tutorial
Duration: 60 minutes

Abstract

Three are dozens of different ways to implement developer tests for your software. You can test for state or for interactions. You can have lots of unit tests or you can go for integration tests. Or a mixture of both. There are also several patterns for structuring your tests. Which approach is best depends on the situation, of course. To be able to choose a course of action, we need to know about our options and understand their respective implications. In this session we will introduce several ways of implementing developer tests, talk about pros and cons of each method and introduce scenarios where to use them. The session is technical and consists mostly of code review.

Detailed description & timetable

We've identified four major topics that we'll cover in a sequence that flows from higher level of abstraction towards the lower end. These major topics are: Test Categories, Test Doubles, Test Structure, and Test Assertions. Each of these topics will get a roughly equal share of the available time between the introduction and summary, ranging from 10 to 15 minutes each. We encourage audience participation and won't have a closing Q&A in the end as it's going to be a packed presentation as it is - and bound to spur conversations throughout the session.

Biography

Lasse Koskela works as a coach, trainer, consultant and programmer, spending his days helping clients and colleagues at Reaktor create successful software products. He has trenched in a variety of software projects ranging from enterprise applications to middleware products developed for an equally wide range of domains. In the recent years, Lasse has spent an increasing amount of time giving training courses and mentoring teams on-site, helping them improve their performance and establish a culture of continuous learning. When not working with clients, Lasse hacks on open source projects, moderates discussions at JavaRanch, or writes about software development — most recently a book on Test Driven Development. He is one of the pioneers of the Finnish agile community and speaks frequently at international conferences.

Sami Honkonen works as a coach and trainer at Reaktor. He has a strong developer background from a variety of projects and his focus on coaching is mostly in the technical area. Mentoring teams on-site by pair programming on production code tasks has given him a chance to work with a large selection of different technologies and approaches. Sami has also been giving courses around the world on Test Driven Development and Object-Oriented Programming.