The Value of Unit Testing

Question

Here are some typical answers(ranked in ascending order of corniness) I get from managers/bosses whenever I bring up the importance of having unit tests and code coverage as

Answer 1

Introducing unit tests into development process is like investment: you have to put some money up front to get profit later. Management should be more attentive to this analogy if you follow through with it: describe what investments are required and then lay down plan for profits.

For example: Investments:

• time spend to implement test infrastructure (no serious product unit tests can be possible without test-specific infrastructure code that streamlines product specific test patterns, test data creation/removal, etc.);
• time spend on writing actual tests;
• time spend on reviewing and supporting tests;
• etc.

Profits:

• no bug ever re-appears without a sign;
• no major features are released without unit tests passing;
• cycle development-qa-fix bugs is cut in half for majority of bugs: development-unit test-fix bugs;
• etc.