Studying Test-Driven Development and its Retainment Over a Six-month Time Span

TL;DR

This study examines the long-term effects of Test-Driven Development (TDD) on novice developers over six months, revealing increased testing and fault detection but no impact on quality or productivity.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on TDD's effects and its retainment among novice developers over a six-month period.

Findings

TDD leads to more tests and higher fault detection.

TDD does not affect software quality or productivity.

TDD is retained by novices for at least six months.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effect of TDD, as compared to a non-TDD approach, as well as its retainment (or retention) over a time span of (about) six months. To pursue these objectives, we conducted a (quantitative) longitudinal cohort study with 30 novice developers (i.e., third-year undergraduate students in Computer Science). We observed that TDD affects neither the external quality of software products nor developers' productivity. However, we observed that the participants applying TDD produced significantly more tests, with a higher fault-detection capability than those using a non-TDD approach. As for the retainment of TDD, we found that TDD is retained by novice developers for at least six months.