D is for Design ... and T for Verification

That is, if we talk about software development and the acronym TDD.
Often translated as Test Driven Development the acronym has been around since the late 1990s and especially the book by Kent Beck – rightfully at that time in my opinion – made people think of TDD as a development technique.
Now when you ask different people what "development" is, a lot of them might argue that it is about coding only – while others take a much broader view. This leads to many people (including Kent Beck if I recall correctly) pointing out that the second D in TDD is very strongly about the design aspect of development.
Since I came into closer contact with some of the proponents of Exploratory Testing (ET) a couple of years back I can't help but wonder if the whole term is misleading. Of course it is about a certain aspect of testing, but those engineers who "really" do testing in the hardware sector (e.g.: with cars, planes, elevators etc.) would consider such tests only as checks or verifications, which don't require a specialist in testing to perform them. After all, everything that is done in these "tests" is to check whether a certain assumption by the developer is met by the system. (Or if the axle distance is really what the designer specified, or if the elevator cable really is capable of holding the specified weight, or... you get the picture)

The (hardware) testers I know on the other hand do something different – and usually only leave a pile of scrap metal when they are through with their tests. They test how much weight is necessary to break the elevator cable, at which speed or lateral acceleration the torsion changes the distance of the axles (which usually doesn't bear to well with the car) and so on.

And TDD simply doesn't give us that kind of tests. Those tests that look for the unexpected or un-specified. And that is is why we still need a lot of non-automated (e.g. exploratory) testing.

So please bear in mind that in a true cross-functional team TDD has it's place in development but so does true testing know-how besides TDD.

Untill next time
  Michael Mahlberg