Studying test-driven development and its retainment over a six-month time spanShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Journal of Systems and Software, ISSN 0164-1212, E-ISSN 1873-1228, Vol. 176, article id 110937Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
In this paper, we investigate the effect of TDD, as compared to a non-TDD approach, as well as its retainment (or retention) over a time span of (about) six months. To pursue these objectives, we conducted a (quantitative) longitudinal cohort study with 30 novice developers (i.e., third-year undergraduate students in Computer Science). We observed that TDD affects neither the external quality of software products nor developers’ productivity. However, we observed that the participants applying TDD produced significantly more tests, with a higher fault-detection capability, than those using a non-TDD approach. As for the retainment of TDD, we found that TDD is retained by novice developers for at least six months. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier Inc. , 2021. Vol. 176, article id 110937
Keywords [en]
Longitudinal cohort study, TDD, Test-driven development, Fault detection, Cohort studies, Detection capability, External quality, Test driven development, Time span, Undergraduate students, Students
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-21289DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2021.110937ISI: 000636371400011Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85102398803OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-21289DiVA, id: diva2:1540079
2021-03-262021-03-262021-04-29Bibliographically approved