---
title: "Research Finds TDD Boosts Developer Productivity"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2008/1/25/research-finds-tdd-boosts-developer-productivity.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2008/1/25/research-finds-tdd-boosts-developer-productivity.html"
published: "2008-01-25T18:19:38"
updated: "2008-01-25T18:19:38"
tags: ["Agile", "Unit Testing"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Thanks to Haacked for posting this one . I haven't yet read it fully, but this IEEE paper shows good results when doing test-first development vs. other methods. \"We found that test-first students on average wrote more…"
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/"
---

# Research Finds TDD Boosts Developer Productivity

By Roy Osherove January 25, 2008 In [Agile](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile), [Unit Testing](https://osherove.com/blog/category/unit-testing)

**Historical article** · Originally published January 25, 2008; technical details may be outdated.

Thanks to Haacked for [posting this one](http://haacked.com/archive/2008/01/22/research-supports-the-effectiveness-of-tdd.aspx).  I haven't yet read it fully, [but this IEEE paper](http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/publications/nrc-47445_e.html) shows good results when doing test-first development vs. other methods.

> "We found that test-first students on average wrote more tests and, in turn, students who wrote more tests tended to be more productive. We also observed that the minimum quality increased linearly with the number of programmer tests, independent of the development strategy employed."

> "The external validity of the results could be limited since the subjects were students. Runeson \[21\] compared freshmen, graduate, and professional developers and concluded that similar improvement trends persisted among the three groups. Replicated experiments by Porter
> and Votta \[22\] and Höst et al. \[23\] suggest that students may provide an adequate model of the professional population."

To read a good summary of that paper go to [Phil's post](http://haacked.com/archive/2008/01/22/research-supports-the-effectiveness-of-tdd.aspx) and read it to the end.

**Update**: [Jacob rips the report to shreds](http://theruntime.com/blogs/jacob/archive/2008/01/22/tdd-proven-effective-or-is-it.aspx).

## More in Agile

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

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- Jan 29, 2008

    ### [Extension methods around the Typemock Community Edition](https://osherove.com/blog/2008/1/29/extension-methods-around-the-typemock-community-edition.html)

- Jan 21, 2008

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- Jan 20, 2008

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---

## 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

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- 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/