From: David Lightstone (david.lightstone@prodigy.net)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 23:23:33 EST
>
> I recently received an invitation to a talk by Robert Martin about
> requirements and testing
>
> In the promo he states that:
>
> "Agile methods have taught us a great deal about automated testing,
> both at the unit level and at the system level. Agile methods have
> also taught us that well written automatic tests are better at
> specifying requirements than prose documents are."
>
> He then goes on to claim that "a good automated test can also be a
> good requirements document."
either marketing propaganda or taken out of context. The keys are the hedges "well written" and "good" you can conceal a lot of disagreement with those words.
>
> I would be very interested to hear people's points of view on this.
> Let's assume that the agile approach is being applied in a non safety
> critical application.
>
> Do you agree that agile automated tests can replace requirements
> specifications?
No
> What would we lose by doing this?
Among other things:
(1) Understandability. (I have no reason to belief that the "tests" will readily be understoud. I am inclined to believe that a specification will be understandable. Note a specification is by definition something that is well written as opposed to the poorly written requrements document)
(2) Awareness of the completeness of the "tests"
(3) Awareness of the correctness of the "tests" (their validity needs to be established). ie the tests are correct because they run conceals a fix the bug orientation
> Also, could agile
> concepts such as early delivery and feedback compensate for any of
> these losses?
No comment
>
> This is a refrain I am hearing increasingly often from a growing agile
> community, and I think a good discussion would be very useful.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jane Huang, PhD.
> School of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and Information
> Systems,
> DePaul University,
> 243 So. Wabash Avenue
> Chicago IL 60604
> 312-362-8863
> jhuang@cs.depaul.edu
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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