Cross-Team Tests
When you document assumptions with tests, you own the tests. The supplier of the package—who you make assumptions about—knows nothing about your tests. If you want a closer relationship with the supplier of a package, you can use the tests to communicate and coordinate your activities.
When you agree on coordinating your activities with the supplier of a package, you can write the tests together. Do this in such a way that the tests reveal as many assumptions as possible. Hidden assumptions are the death of cooperation. With the tests, you document exactly what you expect from the supplied package. The supplier will know the package is complete when all the tests run.
By using stubs (see the section "Stubs," earlier in this book), you can further decouple yourself from the supplier. The job of the supplier is to make the tests run with the real implementation of the package. Your job is to make the tests run for your own code. Until such time as you have the real implementation of the supplied package, you use stub objects. Following this approach, the two teams can develop independently.
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