Beautiful Testing

Agile: A New Proportion and Balance

The originators of the Extreme Programming (XP) agile method believe that if a practice is worth doing, then it should be done early, often, and intensely—turn the dial past maximum (Beck 2000). On the surface, XP looks familiar because it contains the standard set of practices. In reality, no practice has been left unchanged. Two key catalysts for XP’s domino effect of change are small releases and test-driven development.

XP’s concept of a small release is to deliver running, tested features to the user community on a regular basis to maximize business return on investment and to respond to timely feedback with strategic product adaptation (Jeffries 2002). The small release dictates the underlying proportion for agile software development. Everything—requirements, design, development, integration, testing, and review—must be condensed in order for an entire cycle to fit into a short, fixed-sized iteration (typically two weeks). Physical distance between people and conceptual distance between roles must disappear so that interactions are timely, continuous, collaborative, and concrete. Development practices must be highly focused and disciplined so that the software is simultaneously stable and malleable.

Small releases require us to reestablish balance within the whole software development process through the following interdependent practices: stories, face-to-face communication, co-located team, on-site customer, automated test driven ...