So, I have managed to convince ( it didn't take much, because they are smart ) my immediate managers that adding unit test creation to the development cycle is a good thing.

They do want to know an estimate though of how much such an addition would affect the development time for tasks. For instance, without writing tests a developer could complete a certain task in 5 days; how long would it likely take for them to complete the task if writing unit tests was included in the task requirements.

I understand that the benefits are more confidence in the quality of the resulting code, quicker QA cycle ( potentially, or maybe just more effective QA cycle ), ease of future maintenace ( because you can regression test easier for instance ), etc, etc.

But what is the change to the development time cycle? Are there any experiences or articles you can relate/refer me to? I guess a great answer for the next step up would be if it could be summarized as kind of an average percent change....

Also, consider that the dev group is experience in coding, smart, resourceful -- but not used to unit testing. How would the percentage change as they got more experienced with including unit tests in their development process?

I ask here because I know there are several monks who are big proponents of this, and I hope have experience to relate; and we are talking Perl for at least the first group to do this.

thanks in advance.

In reply to Adding Unit tests to the development cycle by Sifmole

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.