Agile Testing Best Practices

Have you ever bumped into a wall with your automated tests? Many developers bump into various roadblocks and hurdles when writing test code. Are your test methods starting to fail because the code-under-test uses the current date and time? Are your automated integration tests failing because the database they integrate with keeps changing? Do you have an explosion of test methods, with the ratio of test code to code-under-test way too high? Is your effort to refactor and improve code overwhelmed by the time it takes to rewrite all those failing unit tests? This presentation is about clearing away Agile testing obstacles, avoiding common pitfalls, and staying away from dangerous practices. Stephen Ritchie is the author of Pro .NET Best Practices ( http://www.apress.com/9781430240235 ). He has been writing software professionally for over 20 years. He works as a software development consultant at Excella Consulting in the Washington, D.C. area. His passion for following best practices has taught him to appreciate the value of experience, practical know-how, and continuous learning. Stephen is the .NET best practices steward at Excella Consulting, working with .NET project teams to facilitate and sort out the helpful practices from the unhelpful ones, the practicable from the impracticable, and the "sounds good" from the "it really is good" practices and principles.