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Everyone knows about some relevant statistics about positive impact of using test/behavior driven development in real projects. I know statistics can be very misleading, but it would be nice to see something like:

"when started using TDD, we rose productivity and reduced bugs introduction by XY %...".

It would be really nice to show this numbers to managers/customers, when explaining need of writing tests (there are still some people thinking we don't have time for this...)

Thanks

iNecas
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  • Anecdotal evidence can be convincing to humans, even it shouldn't be. But beware that any such evidence is unlikely to generalize across languages, app domains, teams, etc. See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/354124/are-there-statistical-studies-that-indicates-that-python-is-more-productive/354249#354249 – Brian Oct 03 '10 at 17:57
  • Also bear in mind that introducing TDD / BDD can actually increase perceived / measured bug counts as bugs get discovered more quickly, or users realise that people are capable of fixing bugs and start reporting them more. Has happened to a couple of teams I've been involved with. – Lunivore Oct 05 '10 at 12:36

1 Answers1

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I have collected the following resources so far:

Realizing quality improvement through test driven development: results and experiences of four industrial teams (Microsoft Research):
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/ese/nagappan_tdd.pdf
resp:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q91566748q234325/?p=7fd98b01480f49e2925f36393c999a72&pi=3

Test driven development: empirical body of evidence (ITEA):
http://www.agile-itea.org/public/deliverables/ITEA-AGILE-D2.7_v1.0.pdf

A Longitudinal Study of the Use of a Test-Driven Development Practice in Industry (IBM):
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.104.6319&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Evaluating Pair Programming with Respect to System Complexity and Programmer Expertise (IEEE):
http://simula.no/research/se/publications/Arisholm.2006.2/simula_pdf_file


There is a discussion on InfoQ:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/03/TDD-Improves-Quality

Also check out this question:
Evidence based studies on the topic of best programming practices?

Community
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jbandi
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    The URL of the first one changed, it's now : http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/ese/nagappan_tdd.pdf – mrmuggles Jan 28 '12 at 03:31
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    The URL of the first changed once again; here is the 2019 version: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Realizing-Quality-Improvement-Through-Test-Driven-Development-Results-and-Experiences-of-Four-Industrial-Teams-nagappan_tdd.pdf – Robbotnik Aug 04 '19 at 14:59