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

Most managers won't see the advantages of unit testing until they see it in action where it makes sense, so my advice, based on experience, is to take the ff steps:

1. Apply unit tests to recurring bugs - This is the best use case to prove the value of unit tests. When you have bugs that just appear and reappear every other build, the unit test will allow developers to see which changes caused the bugs, aside from alerting them in advance that a fix is in order. It's quite easy to demonstrate to management as well.
2. Apply unit tests to regular bugs - With the usefulness of unit tests now clearly demonstrated, several instances of recurring bugs disappearing in the long term should be enough to encourage everyone to use unit tests to evaluate all bugs, to prevent them from becoming recurring bugs.
3. Apply unit tests to new functionality - With unit tests making sure that old bugs don't reccur, and confirm that they are fixed in the first place, the next step would be to apply it to new functionality to ensure that bugs will be minimized. Make it clear that it is impossible to totally eliminate bugs.
4. Apply full blown TDD - The final step will be to apply unit testing even before coding, as a design tool that both helps in designing code and minimizing bugs.

Of course I'm not saying that this is easy -- what I had stated above is an oversimplification which even I struggle with everyday -- it's difficult to convince everyone.

If later you decide to move on to a different company, you may want to explicitly look for a company that practices TDD.