The Principles and Practices of Test-Driven Development

These methodologies are all different in how they are implemented, but they share some
characteristics:

➤ They all make communication across the team a high priority. Developers, business users,
and testers are all encouraged to communicate frequently.

➤ They focus on transparency in the project. The development team does not live in a black
box that obscures their actions from the rest of the team. They use very public artifacts
(a Kanban board, a big visible chart, and so on) to keep the team informed.

➤ The members of the team are all accountable to each other. The team does not succeed or
fail because of one person; they either succeed or fail as a team.

➤ Individual developers do not own sections of the code base. The whole team owns the entire
code base, and everyone is responsible for its quality.

➤ Work is done in short, iterative development cycles, ideally with a release at the end of
each cycle.

➤ The ability to handle change is a cornerstone of the methodology.

➤ Broad strokes of a system are defi ned up front, but detailed design is deferred until the
feature is actually scheduled to be developed.

Agile methodologies are not a silver bullet. They are also not about chaos or “ cowboy coding. ” In
fact, agile methodologies require a larger degree of discipline to administer correctly. Furthermore,
no one true agile methodology exists. Ultimately, each team needs to do what works best for them.
This may mean starting with a branded agile methodology and changing it, or combining aspects of several. You should constantly evaluate your methodology and do more of what works and
less of what doesn ’ t.

The Principles and Practices of Test-Driven Development