--- title: "Test Driven Development proves useful at Google" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/2/test-driven-development-proves-useful-at-google.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/2/test-driven-development-proves-useful-at-google.html" published: "2004-12-02T18:10:00" updated: "2004-12-02T18:10:00" tags: ["Agile Related"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "This is a live blogging session from the recent Developer Testing Conference. The lecture was about Developer Testing in Google and this is only part of it: \" 9:28 Standard Google practices include unit tests and…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Test Driven Development proves useful at Google By Roy Osherove December 2, 2004 In [Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related) **Historical article** · Originally published December 2, 2004; technical details may be outdated. This is a live blogging session from the recent Developer Testing Conference. The lecture was about [Developer Testing in Google](http://www.developertesting.com/archives/200411/LiveBlogFromDeveloperTestingForum.html#DTG) and this is only part of it: "_9:28 Standard Google practices include unit tests and functional tests, continuous builds, last known good build, release brances with authorized bug fix check-ins, focused teams for release engineering, production engineering and QA, bug tracking and logging of production runs._ _9:30 Google brings in XP consultants to educate engineers, employs extreme feedback mechanisms like monitors and ambient orbs for visual feedback. They have specialized test and analysis tools during production and prior to production. Sometimes, they have fix-it weeks for fixing bugs, writing tests, improving documentation, etc._ _9:32 When Google introduced XP to improve quality and other metrics, they hired a team of XP consultants and paired consultants with engineers. They created short projects for the employees with testing/XP as a theme. The teams focused on understanding code base and building good unit tests, and other TDD aspects. How to use infrastructure such as JUnit. XP was introduced at Google about 8 months ago. Engineers are not forced to use XP, but XP adoption is going well. Already, they have seen improvements in key metrics and in stability._ _9:37 First steps were to build functional tests for existing code, develop tests that fail for bugs in the bugs database, unit tests for existing servlet handlers, unit tests and TDD for new code, and fix-it weeks devoted to developing unit tests and functional tests._ _9:40 current status: very stable builds due to unit tests, better stability in backwards compatibility due to unit and functional tests. More TDD in future, with many more tests. Goal is to get to a stage where XP and testing offers benefits beyond build stability and backwards compatibility--much more quality in production software._ " \[via [TestDriven.Com](http://www.testdriven.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=222)\] ## More in Agile Related [All posts in Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related) - Dec 5, 2004 ### [Extending NUnit \*easily\* with version 2.2.1 (finally!)](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/5/extending-nunit-easily-with-version-221-finally.html) - Dec 2, 2004 ### [Nice Agile blog](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/2/nice-agile-blog.html) - Dec 2, 2004 ### [Test Driven Development with C++: Much harder than it should be](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/12/2/test-driven-development-with-c-much-harder-than-it-should-be.html) - Nov 29, 2004 ### [Test Driven Development workshop news and coming attractions](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/29/test-driven-development-workshop-news-and-coming-attractions.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/