software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

, tester-driven development, or bug-driven development, is an

anti-pattern An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer An ...

where the

requirement In engineering, a requirement is a condition that must be satisfied for the output of a work effort to be acceptable. It is an explicit, objective, clear and often quantitative description of a condition to be satisfied by a material, design, pro ...

s are determined by

bug report Tracking system or defect tracking system is a software application that keeps track of reported software bugs in software development projects. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system. Many bug tracking systems, such as those used b ...

s or

test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film) ...

results rather than, for example, the value or cost of a

feature Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...

. The concept is generally invoked facetiously, and comes with the implication that high volumes of computer code are written with little regard for

unit testing Unit testing, component or module testing, is a form of software testing by which isolated source code is tested to validate expected behavior. Unit testing describes tests that are run at the unit-level to contrast testing at the Integration ...

by the programmers. The term itself is a tongue-in-cheek reference to

test-driven development Test-driven development (TDD) is a way of writing source code, code that involves writing an test automation, automated unit testing, unit-level test case that fails, then writing just enough code to make the test pass, then refactoring both the ...

, a widely used methodology in agile software practices. In test-driven development tests are used to drive the implementation towards fulfilling the requirements. Tester-driven development instead shortcuts the process by removing the determination of requirements and letting the testers (or the QA team) drive what they think the software should be through the testing (or QA) process.

Project A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be ...

s that are developed using this anti-pattern often suffer from being extremely late. Another common problem is poor code quality. Common causes for projects ending up being run this way are often: *The testing phase started too early; *Incomplete requirements; *Inexperienced testers; *Inexperienced developers; *Poor

project management Project management is the process of supervising the work of a Project team, team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project initiation documentation, project documentation, crea ...

. Things get worse when the testers realize that they don't know what the requirements are and therefore don't know how to test any particular code changes. The onus then falls on the developers of individual changes to write their own test cases and they are happy to do so because their own tests normally pass and their performance measurements improve. Project leaders are also delighted by the rapid reduction in the number of open change requests.

References

Software development process Anti-patterns {{Software-eng-stub

See also

References