I define success by “interesting”, “learning experience” and “fun”. all 3 were present there. That's what happens when you put 9 smart people together in the same room, especially two on each machine (1 left hanging. next time we'll correct that).
The meeting included a lecture on what is unit testing, working with NUnit and more about the “why” of it. After that we had a hands on lab where people sat in pairs and wrote a simple application that got more and more complex as the training continued. the objective was to show how unit tests help with a dynamically changing code base. And it it. People seemed to “get” it. At the end we all sat down and had a little discussion on some of the aspects of what we just did and what we didn't do. some conclusions:
- there will definitely be another workshop for those who missed out
- possibly a “TDD - a little more in-depth“ session, talking about database testing and other nuances.
- You should all register to the mailing list I've set up. : IL-agile-Dev. we'll talk about some of the things we did there, and most importantly, about some of the problems we face today with implementing TDD in the organization.
One more thing. I was directed to this interesting article today that talk about a case study of implementing TDD and the benefits that followed (including some actual numbers): Integrating Unit Testing Into A Software
If you want to register for the next session (in the coming weeks) which will be identical to this one, email me at Roy at Magen dot com. If you want to register for a more advanced session (about database testing) email me as well saying so.