So.. I need to train the team on Unit Testing - could use C&C on lesson plan

Question

So - management is looking to do a push to move towards doing unit-testing in all the applications moving forward - and eventually get into full TDD/Continuous Integration/Autom

Answer 1

Is a classroom style approach going to work well? That's a question that comes to my mind as what may happen here is so much of a separation between knowledge and application of the ideas that while they may know it, they don't quite get how to use it.

Just to give a different approach, one could jump into whatever projects are going on and start trying to apply some of this which may take a while to trickle down through everyone as the idea would be that you'd train one and then as a pair you'd train another pair and so on, to try to get everyone up to the same point. This way the theoretical stuff that isn't relevant gets taken out early.

Another idea would be to see if it makes sense to try to form teams within the group of 10, such as 2 groups of 3 and a group of 4 or 5 pairs, so that each person can present what they've done and how well do they use this.

I'd second the boundary testing, as well as showing why it can be useful to test with invalid input to see that this doesn't cause the system to roll over and die.

Lastly, it may make sense to have time devoted to handling questions and other 1:1 issues that people have as not everyone will want to ask questions in front of a large group.

EDIT: A caution on Lesson 2, which is a good idea but has a few hazards to note. First, be humble in doing this lesson so that you aren't coming across as a show-off wanting to slam everyone else. Second, I'd suggest leaving some tests incomplete when going over things so that there is an interactive aspect here that prevents the other developers from merely tuning out or rolling their eyes. Third, a follow-up lesson or two of others showing what they did or you going over what they did may be more useful to show that this is a team effort in some ways.