[FitB] - Fit for Software Development
Published by: Addison Wesley (2005)ISBN: 0-321-26934-9
By: Rick Mugridge, Ward Cunningham
This book is a great introduction to the use of Data-Driven Tests (page X) for preparing customer tests whether it be on agile or traditional projects. This is what I wrote for inclusion as "advance praise":
Wow! This is the book I wish I had on my desk when I did my first storytest-driven development project. It explains the philosophy behind the Fit framework and a process for using it to interact with the customers to help define the requirements of the project. It makes FIT so easy and approachable that I wrote my first FIT.Net tests before I even I finished the book.
For the price of one book, you get two (yes two) "books" written by the acknowledged thought leaders of FIT testing.
The first "book" is written for the non-programming customer. It lays out how they can define the functionality of the system they are building (or modifying) using tabular data. It introduces a range of different kinds of "test fixtures" that interpret the data and exercise the system under test (SUT). While it is aimed at a non-technical audience, even programmers will find it useful because it also describes the process for interacting with the customers using the FIT tests as the focal point of the interaction.
The second "book" is targetted for the programmers. It describes how to build each of the kinds of fixtures described in the first "book". It also describes many other things that need to be considered to have robust automated tests. Things like testing without a database to make tests run faster. A lot of the principles will be familiar to programmers who have used any member of the xUnit family of unit testing frameworks. Rick and Ward show us how to put it into practice using a very easy-to-read narrative style that uses a ficticious case study to lead us through all the practices and decisions we are likely to encounter.
Further Reading
More information on FIT can be found at Ward's website http://fit.c2.com.
Copyright © 2003-2008 Gerard Meszaros all rights reserved