How do you balance the time and effort required for TDD with the speed and agility of CI/CD?

Test-Driven Development (TDD) emphasizes writing tests before coding, enhancing software reliability and maintainability through rigorous testing and continuous refactoring. While it leads to cleaner, more robust code, TDD presents challenges such as a steep learning curve and a slower initial development process, particularly in complex or evolving systems. Effective TDD also demands a deep understanding of testing principles and can be resource-intensive, requiring significant training and tooling.

Initially, TDD was just a concept to me. In July 2020, I faced the challenge of creating a Modbus Driver, a task fraught with potential errors from low-level operations. Despite delivering in a week, QA revealed over 40 bugs, extending the timeline to 9 weeks. A year later, I applied TDD to a similar project. Investing 3 weeks in unit tests and 2 in development, I achieved a bug-free result. This experience proved TDD's worth, demonstrating that thorough initial efforts yield almost error-free software.

Sometimes we need different type of tests to make sure about fulfillment of a task or feature so how this methodology can drive and cover all those type of tests?

TDD is a talent amplifier. It can amplify your Software Engineer's coding approach to be more fluid and testable. TDD is a Design Approach, much more than a Testing Approach. TDD is not Good for Unit Tests or Code Coverage, this is the side effect and not the goal of TDD.

Balancing the time and effort required for TDD with the speed and agility of CI/CD can be achieved by recognizing the benefits of TDD, such as producing high-quality code, reducing debugging time, enabling faster development, providing clear documentation, and decreasing long-term costs. While TDD may require more time and effort initially, it can lead to significant savings in the long run by catching problems earlier in the development process and reducing the need for costly debugging and quality assurance. Why not combine CI with TDD, by combining TDD with CI, developers can build in quality, get fast feedback on their integrated work, and ensure that the system is always running and potentially deployable, even during development.

CI is the integration and development part of the equation. The CD is where we ensure the platform is in a Production-Ready environment. Thus, by accelerating the delivery and feedback you can reduce the manual work and errors in your platform. Frequent and reliable feedback is the fruit of CI/CD.

You save time on manual work for assembling and delivering your software artifacts to the user, as well as time on correcting errors made during manual actions

In today's world, simple CI/CD solutions are cheap and can be implemented with minimal infrastructure for isolated and small teams. TDD, in turn, requires working out the requirements in advance, otherwise every time after testing the requirements, you may find tests that are outdated and should be scrapped

TDD and CI/CD require more effort, discipline, and skills. Think of it as putting the measure before we start the development, which will ensure less manual work and bug fixes. Remember, creating a code is better than fixing the code.

Challenges of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) include managing test suites' complexity, maintaining fast feedback loops, and ensuring compatibility with diverse environments. TDD requires discipline to write tests before code, potentially slowing initial development. CI/CD demands robust automation and infrastructure to support rapid integration and deployment cycles. Balancing thorough testing with swift delivery poses a challenge, requiring careful orchestration of processes and tools to achieve both quality and agility in software development.

For me, balancing TDD and CI/CD requires Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). I am using BDD to tackle the data-gathering aspect of any project that I am handling. As it is easy to create and readily readable. I prefer to have these steps before I start the development of my projects. BDD is for stakeholders. It is used to create TDD for the technical teams. CI/CD is then used to make sure that you have the environment for your software.

BDD, TDD, CI/CD, and UI Design are the foundation of Software Development. Each Software Engineer or Developer learned programming in their own unique way. Developing any platform using TDD makes our developers think from multiple vantage points. The ones who code it, the ones who will continue it, and the ones who will accept it. Adding BDD, TDD, and CI/CD into your Software Project makes sense because of the value it brings even before you start the development. Think of it as a part of your planning. These require a human touch!