Pinta Education Blog

Here the emphasis is on the team creating tests before creating code. This approach has several benefits:

• To write a test, the requirements must be understood. This in effect gives us the shift-left approach. By shifting left, defects may be discovered earlier in the lifecycle, allowing early fixing and savings in time and money
• If the tests are thought through from different perspectives, there is an improved chance of delivering a product that meets customer needs
• The team, when working together, will gain a better understanding of the system requirements, which should increase individual and thus team productivity.

These approaches have proven useful in iterative development models. Variations include:

• Test-driven development – the developer creates the tests, code is written to pass the tests, and then refactoring of both tests and code takes place if required.
• Acceptance test-driven development – tests here are derived from the acceptance criteria agreed for a system when it is being designed, before developing the code.
• Behaviour-driven development – here the test cases are written in the natural language of the stakeholders so that they are easier to understand. A typical format for these test cases is the Given/When/Then format.