I was talking with Llewellyn Falco the other day (now many days back) about test suites. At some point, I asked him for his opinion to a not-so-simple question:
What are the characteristics of a good test suite?
He gave me a good answer. And that made me curious – how would other people answer this question? What commonalities and differences would emerge?
So I asked the same question to a bunch of people that I thought would give interesting answers. Here’s what they had to say.
- Corey Haines – Software Journeyman. Developer background.
- J.B. Rainsberger – XP coach and practitioner. Developer background.
- Elisabeth Hendrickson – test obsessed empiricist. Tester background.
- Arlo Belshee – XP refiner. Developer background.
- Ron Jeffries – XP Curmudgeon. Developer background.
- Lisa Crispin – defines agile tester. Tester background.
- James Shore – XP immersion coach. Developer background.
- Ward Cunningham – great innovator. Developer background.
- Brian Marick – challenges our thinking. Tester background.
- Llewellyn Falco – teaches XP to kids & does legacy code saves. Developer background.
- Steve Freeman – mocker extrordinaire. Developer background.
- Markus Gärtner – agile testing coach. Tester background.
I am also writing a blog enty where I talk about the commonalities and differences that I observed.
Is there someone who you wish was on this list? Email or tweet me with suggestions.
Further people to ask this question?
A few people come to mind: Gojko Adzic, James Markus Bach, Jon Bach, Markus Gärtner, Liz Keogh, Rob Lambert
Steve Freeman, Gary Bernhardt, Michael Feathers.
Greg Young, Ayende Rahien, Dan North, Aslak Hellesøy
Kent Back; David Thomas; Martin Fowler; Chad Fowler; Sandi Metz.
How about asking Dave Haeffner?