Fit for Developing Software

Fit for Developing Software

$64.99

SKU: 9780321269348

Description

An example-based book that introduces an effective open source framework for building better software by incorporating automated testing

  • Spells out the importance of testing in language that both developers and customers can understand, and shows a proven process for automating the function
  • Open source technologies are not accompanied by traditional tech support; this book helps fill that void
  • From the creator of the framework (Cunningham) and a leader in the software engineering educational community (Mugridge)

“The unique thing about Fit for Developing Software is the way it addresses the interface between customers/testers/analysts and programmers. All will find something in the book about how others wish to be effectively communicated with. A Fit book for programmers wouldn’t make sense because the goal is to create a language for business-oriented team members. A Fit book just for businesspeople wouldn’t make sense because the programmers have to be involved in creating that language. The result is a book that should appeal to a wide range of people whose shared goal is improving team communications.”

–Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute

“Even with the best approaches, there always seemed to be a gap between the software that was written and the software the user wanted. With Fit we can finally close the loop. This is an important piece in the agile development puzzle.”

–Dave Thomas, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

“Ward and Rick do a great job in eschewing the typical, overly complicated technology trap by presenting a simple, user-oriented, and very usable technology that holds fast to the agile principles needed for success in this new millennium.”

–Andy Hunt, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

“Florida Tech requires software engineering students to take a course in programmer testing, which I teach. Mugridge and Cunningham have written a useful and instructive book, which will become one of our course texts.”

–Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology

“Rick and Ward continue to amaze me. Testing business rules is a fundamentally hard thing that has confounded many, and yet these two have devised a mechanism that cuts to the essence of the problem. In this work they offer a simple, thorough, approachable, and automatable means of specifying and testing such rules.”

–Grady Booch, IBM Fellow

“By providing a simple, effective method for creating and automating tabular examples of requirements, Fit has dramatically improved how domain experts, analysts, testers, and programmers collaborate to produce quality software.”

–Joshua Kerievsky, founder, Industrial Logic, Inc., and author of Refactoring to Patterns

“Agile software development relies on collaborating teams, teams of customers, analysts, designers, developers, testers, and technical writers. But, how do they work together? Fit is one answer, an answer that has been thoroughly thought through, implemented, and tested in a number of situations. Primavera has significantly stabilized its product lineusing Fit, and I’m so impressed by the results that I’m suggesting it to everyone I know. Rick and Ward, in their everlasting low-key approach, have again put the keystone in the arch of software development. Congratulations and thanks from the software development community.”

–Ken Schwaber, Scrum Alliance, Agile Alliance, and codeveloper of Scrum

“Fit is the most important new technique for understanding and communicating requirements. It’s a revolutionary approach to bringing experts and programmers together. This book describes Fit comprehensively and authoritatively. If you want to produce great software, you need to read this book.”

–James Shore, Principal, Titanium I.T. LLC

“There are both noisy and quiet aspects of the agile movement and it is often the quieter ones that have great strategic importance. This book by Ward and Rick describes one of these absolutely vital, but often quieter, practices–testing business requirements. A renewed focus on testing, from test-driven development for developers to story testing for customers, is one of the agile community’s great contributions to our industry, and this book will become one of the cornerstones of that contribution. Stories are done-done (ready for release) when they have been tested by both developers (done) and customers (done-done). The concepts and practices involved in customer story testing are critical to project success and wonderfully portrayed in this book. Buy it. Read it. Keep it handy in your day-to-day work.”

–Jim Highsmith, Director of Agile Software Development & Project Management Practice, Cutter Consortium

“I have been influenced by many books, but very few have fundamentally changed how I think and work. This is one of those books. The ideas in this book describe not just how to use a specific framework in order to test our software, but also how we should communicate about and document that software. This book is an excellent guide to a tool and approach that will fundamentally improve how you think about and build software–as it has done for me.”

–Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software, author of User Stories Applied

“Fit is a tool to help whole teams grow a common language for describing and testing the behavior of software. This books fills a critical gap–helping both product owners and programmers learn what Fit is and how to use it well.”

–Bill Wake, independent consultant

“Over the past several years, I’ve been using Fit and FitNesse with development teams. They are not only free and powerful testing tools, they transform development by making the behavior of applications concrete, verifiable, and easily observable. The only thing that has been missing is a good tutorial and reference. Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham’s Fit For Developing Software fits the bill. Essentially, two books in one, it is a very readable guide that approaches Fit from technical and nontechnical perspectives. This book is a significant milestone and it will make higher software quality achievable for many teams.”

–Michael C. Feathers, author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code, and consultant, Object Mentor, Inc.

“Wow! This is the book I wish I had on my desk when I did my first story test-driven development project. It explains the philosophy behind the Fit framework and a process for using it to interact with the customers to help define the requirements of the project. It makes Fit so easy and approachable that I wrote my first FitNesse tests before I even I finished the book.

“For the price of one book, you get two, written by the acknowledged thought leaders of Fit testing. The first is written for the nonprogramming customer. It lays out how you can define the functionality of the system you are building (or modifying) using tabular data. It introduces a range of different kinds of ‘test fixtures’ that interpret the data and exercise the system under test. While it is aimed at a nontechnical audience, even programmers will find it useful because it also describes the process for interacting with the customers, using the Fit tests as the focal point of the interaction.

“The second ‘book’ is targeted to programmers. It describes how to build each kind of fixture described in the first book. It also describes many other things that need to be considered to have robust automated tests–things like testing without a database to make tests run faster. A lot of the principles will be familiar to programmers who have used any member of the xUnit family of unit testing frameworks. Rick and Ward show you how to put it into practice in a very easy-to-read narrative style that uses a fictitious case study to lead you through all the practices and decisions you are likely to encounter.”

–Gerard Meszaros, ClearStream Consulting

The Fit open source testing framework brings unprecedented agility to the entire development process. Fit for Developing Software shows you how to use Fit to clarify business rules, express them with concrete examples, and organize the examples into test tables that drive testing throughout the software lifecycle. Using a realistic case study, Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham–the creator of Fit–introduce each of Fit’s underlying concepts and techniques, and explain how you can put Fit to work incrementally, with the lowest possible risk. Highlights include

  • Integrating Fit into your development processes
  • Using Fit to promote effective communication between businesspeople, testers, and developers
  • Expressing business rules that define calculations, decisions, and business processes
  • Connecting Fit tables to the system with “fixtures” that check whether tests are actually satisfied
  • Constructing tests for code evolution, restructuring, and other changes to legacy systems
  • Managing the quality and evolution of tests
  • A companion Web site (http://fit.c2.com/) that offers additional resources and source code

Rick Mugridge runs his own company, Rimu Research, and is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He specializes in Agile software development, automated testing, test-driven development, and user interfaces. Rick is one of the world’s leading developers of Fit fixtures and tools, and is the creator of the FitLibrary.

Ward Cunningham is widely respected for his contributions to the practices of object-oriented development, Extreme Programming, and software agility. Cofounder of Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc., he has served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as principal engineer at the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. Ward led the creation of Fit, and is responsible for innovations ranging from the CRC design method to WikiWikiWeb.

“The unique thing about Fit for Developing Software is the way it addresses the interface between customers/testers/analysts and programmers. All will find something in the book about how others wish to be effectively communicated with. A Fit book for programmers wouldn’t make sense because the goal is to create a language for business-oriented team members. A Fit book just for businesspeople wouldn’t make sense because the programmers have to be involved in creating that language. The result is a book that should appeal to a wide range of people whose shared goal is improving team communications.”

–Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute

“Even with the best approaches, there always seemed to be a gap between the software that was written and the software the user wanted. With Fit we can finally close the loop. This is an important piece in the agile development puzzle.”

–Dave Thomas, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

“Ward and Rick do a great job in eschewing the typical, overly complicated technology trap by presenting a simple, user-oriented, and very usable technology that holds fast to the agile principles needed for success in this new millennium.”

–Andy Hunt, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

“Florida Tech requires software engineering students to take a course in programmer testing, which I teach. Mugridge and Cunningham have written a useful and instructive book, which will become one of our course texts.”

–Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology

“Rick and Ward continue to amaze me. Testing business rules is a fundamentally hard thing that has confounded many, and yet these two have devised a mechanism that cuts to the essence of the problem. In this work they offer a simple, thorough, approachable, and automatable means of specifying and testing such rules.”

–Grady Booch, IBM Fellow

“By providing a simple, effective method for creating and automating tabular examples of requirements, Fit has dramatically improved how domain experts, analysts, testers, and programmers collaborate to produce quality software.”

–Joshua Kerievsky, founder, Industrial Logic, Inc., and author of Refactoring to Patterns

“Agile software development relies on collaborating teams, teams of customers, analysts, designers, developers, testers, and technical writers. But, how do they work together? Fit is one answer, an answer that has been thoroughly thought through, implemented, and tested in a number of situations. Primavera has significantly stabilized its product lineusing Fit, and I’m so impressed by the results that I’m suggesting it to everyone I know. Rick and Ward, in their everlasting low-key approach, have again put the keystone in the arch of software development. Congratulations and thanks from the software development community.”

–Ken Schwaber, Scrum Alliance, Agile Alliance, and codeveloper of Scrum

“Fit is the most important new technique for understanding and communicating requirements. It’s a revolutionary approach to bringing experts and programmers together. This book describes Fit comprehensively and authoritatively. If you want to produce great software, you need to read this book.”

–James Shore, Principal, Titanium I.T. LLC

“There are both noisy and quiet aspects of the agile movement and it is often the quieter ones that have great strategic importance. This book by Ward and Rick describes one of these absolutely vital, but often quieter, practices–testing business requirements. A renewed focus on testing, from test-driven development for developers to story testing for customers, is one of the agile community’s great contributions to our industry, and this book will become one of the cornerstones of that contribution. Stories are done-done (ready for release) when they have been tested by both developers (done) and customers (d

Foreword.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

About the Authors.

1. Introduction.

    The Need for Fit

    The Value of Fit Tables

    Fit and Business Roles

    Organization of the Book

    The Book’s Use of Color

I. INTRODUCING FIT TABLES.

2. Communicating with Tables.

    Fit Tables

    Tables for Communicating

    Tables for Testing

    Tables, Fixtures, and a System Under Test

    Reading Fit Tables

3. Testing Calculations with ColumnFixture Tables.

    Calculating Discount

    Reports: Traffic Lights

    Calculating Credit

    Selecting a Phone Number

    Summary

    Exercises

4. Testing Business Processes with ActionFixture Tables.

    Buying Items

    Actions on a Chat Server

    Summary

    Exercises

5. Testing Lists with RowFixture Tables.

    Testing Lists Whose Order Is Unimportant

    Testing Lists Whose Order Is Important

    Summary

    Exercises

6. Testing with Sequences of Tables.

    Chat Room Changes

    Discount Group Changes

    Summary

    Exercises

7. Creating Tables and Running Fit.

    Using Spreadsheets for Tests

    Organizing Tests in Test Suites

    Using HTML for Tests

    Summary

    Exercises

8. Using FitNesse.

    Introduction

    Getting Started

    Organizing Tests with Subwikis

    Test Suites

    Ranges of Values

    Other Features

    Summary

    Exercises

9. Expecting Errors.

    Expected Errors with Calculations

    Expected Errors with Actions

    Summary

10. FitLibrary Tables.

    Flow-Style Actions with DoFixture

    Expected Errors with DoFixture

    Actions on Domain Objects with DoFixture

    Setup

    CalculateFixture Tables

    Ordered List Tables

    Testing Parts of a List

    Summary

    Exercises

11. A Variety of Tables.

    Business Forms

    Testing Associations

    Two-Dimensional Images

    Summary

    Exercises

II. DEVELOPING TABLES FOR RENTAPARTYSOFTWARE.

12. Introducing Fit at RentAPartySoftware.

    RentAPartySoftware

    Development Issues

    An Initial Plan

    The Cast

    The Rest of This Part

    Summary

    Exercises

13. Getting Started: Emily and Don’s First Table.

    Introduction

    Choosing Where to Start

    The Business Rule

    Starting Simple

    Adding the Grace Period

    Adding High-Demand Items

    Reports

    Seth’s Return

    Summary

    Exercises

14. Testing a Business Process: Cash Rentals.

    Introduction

    Cash Rentals

    Split and Restructure

    Which Client

    Summary

    Exercises

15. Tests Involving the Date and Time.

    Introduction

    Charging a Deposit

    Dates

    Business Transactions

    Sad Paths

    Reports

    Summary

    Exercises

16. Transforming Workflow Tests into Calculation Tests.

    Introduction

    Testing Calculations Instead

    Using Durations

    Reports

    Summary

    Exercises

17. Story Test-Driven Development with Fit.

    Introduction

    The Stories

    The First Storytests

    The Planning Game

    Adding to the Storytests

    Progress During the Iteration

    Exploratory Testing at Iteration End

    Summary

    Exercises

18. Designing and Refactoring Tests to Communicate Ideas.

    Principles of Test Design

    Fit Tests for Business Rules

    Workflow Tests

    Calculation Tests

    List Tests

    Tests and Change

    Automation of Tests

    Summary

19. Closing for Nonprogrammers.

    The Value of Fit Tables

    Getting Fit at RentAPartySoftware

III. INTRODUCING FIT FIXTURES.

20. Connecting Tables and Applications.

    Writing Fixtures

    Fixtures and Traffic Lights

21. Column Fixtures.

    Fixture CalculateDiscount

    Extending Credit

    Selecting a Phone Number

    ColumnFixture in General

    Summary

    Exercises

22. Action Fixtures.

    Buying Items

    Changing State of Chat Room

    ActionFixture in General

    Summary

    Exercises

23. List Fixtures.

    Testing Unordered Lists

    Testing Ordered Lists

    Testing a List with Parameters

    Summary

    Exercises

24. Fixtures for Sequences of Tables.

    Chat Room Fixtures

    Discount Group Fixtures

    Summary

    Exercises

25. Using Other Values in Tables.

    Standard Values

    Values of Money

    Values in FitNesse and the Flow Fixtures

    Summary

    Exercises

26. Installing and Running Fit.

    Installing Fit and FitLibrary

    Running Fit on Folders

    Running Fit on HTML Files

    Running Tests During the Build

    Other Ways to Run Tests

    Summary

27. Installing FitNesse.

    Installation

    Locating the Code

    Larger-Scale Use with Virtual Wiki

    Debugging FitNesse Tests

    Summary

    Exercises

28. FitLibrary Fixtures.

    Flow-Style Actions with DoFixture

    DoFixtures as Adapters

    Using SetFixture

    Expected Errors with DoFixture

    Actions on Domain Objects with DoFixture

    DoFixture in General

    Setup

    CalculateFixture Tables

    Ordered-List Tables

    Testing Parts of a List

    Using Other Values in Flow Tables

    Summary

    Exercises

29. Custom Table Fixtures.

    Business Forms

    Testing Associations

    Two-Dimensional Images

    Summary

IV. DEVELOPING FIXTURES FOR RENTAPARTYSOFTWARE.

30. Fixtures and Adapting the Application.

    Introduction

    The Programmers’ Perspective

    System Architecture

    Test Infecting for Improvements

    The Rest of This Part

31. Emily’s First Fixture.

    The Table

    Developing the Fixture

    Summary

    Exercises

32. Fixtures Testing Through the User Interface.

    Introduction

    Spike

    The Fixtures

    The Adapter

    Showing Others

    Summary

33. Restructuring the System for Testing.

    Test Infecting

    Slow Tests

    Setup

    Barriers to Testing

    Transactions

    Transaction Fixture

    Split Domain and Data Source Layers

    Reduce Interdependencies

    Summary

34. Mocks and Clocks.

    Introduction

    Changing the Date

    Time-Related Object Interactions

    Date Formatting

    Changing the Application in Small Steps

    Summary

35. Running Calculation Tests Indirectly.

    Testing Directly

    Testing Indirectly

    Summary

36. Closing for Programmers at RPS.

    The Value of Fit Tables

    Getting Fit at RPS

V. CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT.

37. The Architecture of Fit.

    Running Fit

    Parse Tree

    doTable()

    Counts in Class Fixture

    The Fixture Subclasses

    TypeAdapter

    Summary

    Exercises

38. Developing Custom Fixtures.

    Using SetUpFixture

    SetUpFixture

    ImageFixture

    Summary

39. Custom Runners.

    Runners

    Calculator Runner

    Reading Tests from a Text File

    Reading Tests from a Spreadsheet

    Summary

40. Model-Based Test Generation.

    Symmetries: Operations That Cancel Each Other

    Generate a Simple Sequence

    Generate an Interleaved Sequence

    Summary

    Exercises

VI. APPENDICES.

Appendix A: Background Material.

    Testing

    Agile Software Development

    Ubiquitous Language

Appendix B: Book Resources Web Site.

Appendix C: Fit and Other Programming Languages.

    Table Portability

    Other Programming Languages

Bibliography.

Index.

Additional information

Dimensions 0.90 × 7.00 × 9.00 in
Series

Imprint

Format

ISBN-13

ISBN-10

Author

,

BISAC

Subjects

professional, higher education, Employability, IT Professional, COM051330, W-21 COMPUTER SCIENCE/REFRNCE