Introduction: Building an Application Using TDD
Explore how to build software iteratively using test-driven development alongside agile practices. Learn to prepare your Java environment for test-first coding and how user stories help capture requirements effectively. This lesson guides you through delivering working functionality in small steps and refining your design with early feedback.
We'll cover the following...
In this chapter, we’re going to learn the practical side of TDD by building the application test first. We’re also going to use an approach known as agile software development as we build. Being agile means building our software in small, self-contained iterations instead of building it all at once. These small steps allow us to learn more about the software design as we go.
Agile software development with TDD
We adapt and refine the design over time as we become more certain of how a good design might look. We can offer working functionality to early test users and receive their feedback long before the application is complete. This is valuable. As we’ve seen in earlier sections, TDD is an excellent approach for providing rapid feedback on self-contained pieces of software. It’s the perfect complement to agile development.
Chapter goals
To help us build in this way, this chapter introduces the technique of user stories, which is a way of capturing requirements that fit an agile approach well. We’ll get our Java development environment ready for test-first development before describing what our application will do. In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics: