Last week at TechEd Australia I presented a session on Unit Testing and Test Driven Development. Presenting this session raised a dilemma for me.
I have been using Unit Testing, Test First and TDD for eight years now. I have been teaching the benefits of a test first approach for seven years.
Should I assume the attendees coming to this session are already sold on TDD and therefore target the content at some of the issues with TDD and tooling or should I focus on teaching the benefits of TDD to attendees who are not yet TDD believers?
I thought about this and decided that while TDD is becoming popular the attendees coming to this session are most likely to not be practicing TDD and want to learn why they should care about unit testing and TDD.
It was a gamble that seemed to pay off. If you attended my session and were already a believer, I hope you learned something and I apologize that it might not have been what you were expecting.
The majority of the attendees in the TDD presentation were learning about TDD for the first time, and the feedback I received was awesome. Here is a sample of the comments about the session:
Brilliant - got my value for TechEd in a single session (especially as my manager who needed convincing re nunit was sitting with me )
Brilliant. I want to get this presentation delivered to all my developers who couldn't make it to TechEd. We've bought into Unit Testing and we need to get to 100% breakthrough, next up has to be TDD
By far this is my best TechEd experience so far. WE NEED MORE NEIL's IN THIS WORLD. Thank you for giving him a session to WOW us with.
Excellent session - I am now a believer!
Excellent session - well presented, clear and concise with lots of useful items and practices to take away. Best session yet.
For me, this has been the best session so far! Excellent content and an excellent presenter! Fantastic. I would love to learn more about this subject. I am implementing unit testing in my team starting Monday!
Great presentation. Very important way of doing development.
Highlight of the conference for me. 11 out of 10.
Thank you to everyone who attended this session.
Information on the eXtreme .NET book I mentioned in the talk
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
By far the best session I attended at TechEd. Was exactly the content my team and I needed to hear. Thanks Neil.
Post a Comment