Does TDD speed up development?
Scott Bellware posted a great article on what is often one of the main reasons for people dropping or never starting TDD or Unit Testing; often stating ‘It takes longer doing TDD’ and ‘I can code this much quicker without unit tests.’
The answer to the question, “Does test-driven development speed up development?” depends on what you personally believe “development” is.
He discusses how we should be looking at software production and how the software development business has an out-dated idea of what productivity is.
Test-driven development supports flow. The software development industry at large is years away from recognizing that flow rather than efficiency is what creates giant leaps in productivity.
Looking at this flow and the whole production pipeline he notes
Test-driven development may require you to have nerves of steel while you’re adopting it and dealing with the antithetical notion of going slower to speed up, but it will speed things up. It just might not speed you up.
I really like this concise view on why Test Driven Development does speed up development, it just may not be what you think of as development.
