---
title: "Unit Testing Best Practices and guidelines"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/27/unit-testing-best-practices-and-guidelines.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/27/unit-testing-best-practices-and-guidelines.html"
published: "2005-07-27T17:01:00"
updated: "2005-07-27T17:01:00"
tags: ["Agile Related"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Someone asked me about this the other day - there are currently no concrete set of guidelines for unit testing best practices (not talking about HOW-TOs, but about HOW_NOT_TOs). So it occurred to me that I've been…"
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/"
---

# Unit Testing Best Practices and guidelines

By Roy Osherove July 27, 2005 In [Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related)

**Historical article** · Originally published July 27, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

Someone asked me about this the other day - there are currently no concrete set of guidelines for unit testing best practices (not talking about HOW-TOs, but about HOW\_NOT\_TOs). So it occurred to me that I've been keeping such a list on this blog for a while now (I keep adding whenever I get the time to post something new to it) only its buried on the left side of my blog page.

So, you can get the full list here:

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/tags/Testing+Guidelines/default.aspx

There's also an RSS feed especially for that if you'd like on that page.

I'm working on publishing an article on this topic (some sort of a top-10 tips for better unit tests) for MSDN Magazine so I'm holding off some of the content, and it's killing me I swear. Hopefully it won't be long now.

This Monday (August 1st) I'm heading off to Ireland to do some training over there. I'll also stop by at the [Irish .NET user group](http://blogs.msdn.com/clare_dillon/archive/2005/07/26/443774.aspx) and give two talks: intro to Agile development and Unit Testing Best Practices (more elaborate than the category I just linked to + some new stuff)

## More in Agile Related

[All posts in Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related)

- Jul 28, 2005

    ### [Unit test readability should not come in place of maintainability - they go hand in hand](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/28/unit-test-readability-should-not-come-in-place-of-maintainab.html)

- Jul 28, 2005

    ### [\[Audio Interview\] Randy Miller on MSF Agile and software modeling techniques](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/28/audio-interview-randy-miller-on-msf-agile-and-software-model.html)

- Jul 25, 2005

    ### [XP Games links](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/25/xp-games-links.html)

- Jul 25, 2005

    ### [\[Article\] The Test Feasibility Matrix](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/7/25/article-the-test-feasibility-matrix.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/