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

If management is serious about this, then they have to take the bull by the horns and take action themselves not just have a little training. Start having them ask to see the tests in code reviews. Once this is common and people know they willnot pass the code reveiw without a test, then have them refuse to deploy new code until there are tests written. It will only take a couple of iterations of this before people will know that they can't get away wihtout writing the tests and then they will do so fairly reliably. Yes the first time the manager refuses to deploy, something will probably be late. They have to take that into accound in their own planning. They also will need to start adding test writing time to their task estimating. No one wants to do this if they think they will be blamed because it takes longer to write tests and code than just to write code. Have a published schedule for how this will be implemented (you need to give them some time to learn how to do this before it is required for all new development) and on the drop dead date, nothing gets to prod without tests.