Towards an operationalization of test-driven development skills: An industrial empirical study . Fucci, D., Turhan, B., Juristo, N., Dieste, O., Tosun-Misirli, A., & Oivo, M. Information and Software Technology , 68:82 - 97, 2015.
Towards an operationalization of test-driven development skills: An industrial empirical study  [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Abstract Context: The majority of the empirical studies on Test-driven development (TDD) are concerned with verifying or refuting the effectiveness of the technique over a traditional approach, and they tend to neglect whether the subjects possess the necessary skills to apply TDD, though they argue such skills are necessary. Objective: We evaluate a set of minimal, a priori and in process skills necessary to apply TDD. We determine whether variations in external quality (i.e., number of defects) and productivity (i.e., number of features implemented) can be associated with different clusters of the \TDD\ skills’ set. Method: We executed a quasi-experiment involving 30 practitioners from industry. We first grouped the participants according to their \TDD\ skills’ set (consisting of a priori experience on programming and testing as well as in-process \TDD\ conformance) into three levels (Low-Medium-High) using k-means clustering. We then applied \ANOVA\ to compare the clusters in terms of external quality and productivity, and conducted post-hoc pairwise analysis. Results: We did not observe a statistically significant difference between the clusters either for external software quality ( F ( 2 , 27 = 1.44 , p = . 260 ), or productivity ( F ( 2 , 27 ) = 3.02 , p = . 065 ). However, the analysis of the effect sizes and their confidence intervals shows that the \TDD\ skills’ set is a factor that could account for up to 28% of the external quality, and 38% for productivity. Conclusion: We have reason to conclude that focusing on the improvement of \TDD\ skills’ set investigated in this study could benefit software developers in improving their baseline productivity and the external quality of the code they produce. However, replications are needed to overcome the issues related with the statistical power of this study. We suggest practical insights for future work to investigate the phenomenon further.
@article{Fucci201582,
  abstract = {Abstract Context: The majority of the empirical studies on Test-driven development (TDD) are concerned with verifying or refuting the effectiveness of the technique over a traditional approach, and they tend to neglect whether the subjects possess the necessary skills to apply TDD, though they argue such skills are necessary. Objective: We evaluate a set of minimal, a priori and in process skills necessary to apply TDD. We determine whether variations in external quality (i.e., number of defects) and productivity (i.e., number of features implemented) can be associated with different clusters of the \{TDD\} skills’ set. Method: We executed a quasi-experiment involving 30 practitioners from industry. We first grouped the participants according to their \{TDD\} skills’ set (consisting of a priori experience on programming and testing as well as in-process \{TDD\} conformance) into three levels (Low-Medium-High) using k-means clustering. We then applied \{ANOVA\} to compare the clusters in terms of external quality and productivity, and conducted post-hoc pairwise analysis. Results: We did not observe a statistically significant difference between the clusters either for external software quality ( F ( 2 , 27 = 1.44 , p = . 260 ), or productivity ( F ( 2 , 27 ) = 3.02 , p = . 065 ). However, the analysis of the effect sizes and their confidence intervals shows that the \{TDD\} skills’ set is a factor that could account for up to 28% of the external quality, and 38% for productivity. Conclusion: We have reason to conclude that focusing on the improvement of \{TDD\} skills’ set investigated in this study could benefit software developers in improving their baseline productivity and the external quality of the code they produce. However, replications are needed to overcome the issues related with the statistical power of this study. We suggest practical insights for future work to investigate the phenomenon further. },
  added-at = {2015-10-03T00:25:16.000+0200},
  author = {Fucci, Davide and Turhan, Burak and Juristo, Natalia and Dieste, Oscar and Tosun-Misirli, Ayse and Oivo, Markku},
  biburl = {http://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/250e4f64fda0da4e8a5b42068eefc6c1e/burak.turhan},
  doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2015.08.004},
  interhash = {0815784b3747691fd63d7eb7466bffa8},
  intrahash = {50e4f64fda0da4e8a5b42068eefc6c1e},
  issn = {0950-5849},
  journal = {Information and Software Technology },
  keywords = {myown tdd},
  pages = {82 - 97},
  timestamp = {2015-10-03T00:25:16.000+0200},
  title = {Towards an operationalization of test-driven development skills: An industrial empirical study },
  url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584915001469},
  volume = 68,
  year = 2015
}

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