Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests [Kindle Edition]

Rick Mugridge (Author), Ward Cunningham (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"The unique thing about Fit for Developing Software is the way it addresses the interface between customers/testers/analysts and programmers. All will find something in the book about how others wish to be effectively communicated with. A Fit book for programmers wouldn't make sense because the goal is to create a language for business-oriented team members. A Fit book just for businesspeople wouldn't make sense because the programmers have to be involved in creating that language. The result is a book that should appeal to a wide range of people whose shared goal is improving team communications."

--Kent Beck, Three Rivers Institute

"Even with the best approaches, there always seemed to be a gap between the software that was written and the software the user wanted. With Fit we can finally close the loop. This is an important piece in the agile development puzzle."

--Dave Thomas, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

"Ward and Rick do a great job in eschewing the typical, overly complicated technology trap by presenting a simple, user-oriented, and very usable technology that holds fast to the agile principles needed for success in this new millennium."

--Andy Hunt, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer

"Florida Tech requires software engineering students to take a course in programmer testing, which I teach. Mugridge and Cunningham have written a useful and instructive book, which will become one of our course texts."

--Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology

"Rick and Ward continue to amaze me. Testing business rules is a fundamentally hard thing that has confounded many, and yet these two have devised a mechanism that cuts to the essence of the problem. In this work they offer a simple, thorough, approachable, and automatable means of specifying and testing such rules."

--Grady Booch, IBM Fellow

"By providing a simple, effective method for creating and automating tabular examples of requirements, Fit has dramatically improved how domain experts, analysts, testers, and programmers collaborate to produce quality software."

--Joshua Kerievsky, founder, Industrial Logic, Inc., and author of Refactoring to Patterns

"Agile software development relies on collaborating teams, teams of customers, analysts, designers, developers, testers, and technical writers. But, how do they work together? Fit is one answer, an answer that has been thoroughly thought through, implemented, and tested in a number of situations. Primavera has significantly stabilized its product lineusing Fit, and I'm so impressed by the results that I'm suggesting it to everyone I know. Rick and Ward, in their everlasting low-key approach, have again put the keystone in the arch of software development. Congratulations and thanks from the software development community."

--Ken Schwaber, Scrum Alliance, Agile Alliance, and codeveloper of Scrum

"Fit is the most important new technique for understanding and communicating requirements. It's a revolutionary approach to bringing experts and programmers together. This book describes Fit comprehensively and authoritatively. If you want to produce great software, you need to read this book."

--James Shore, Principal, Titanium I.T. LLC

"There are both noisy and quiet aspects of the agile movement and it is often the quieter ones that have great strategic importance. This book by Ward and Rick describes one of these absolutely vital, but often quieter, pra...

About the Author

Rick Mugridge runs his own company, Rimu Research, and is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He specializes in Agile software development, automated testing, test-driven development, and user interfaces. Rick is one of the world's leading developers of Fit fixtures and tools, and is the creator of the FitLibrary.

Ward Cunningham is widely respected for his contributions to the practices of object-oriented development, Extreme Programming, and software agility. Cofounder of Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc., he has served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as principal engineer at the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. Ward led the creation of Fit, and is responsible for innovations ranging from the CRC design method to WikiWikiWeb.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 4413 KB
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (June 29, 2005)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001TKD4R6
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book about an amazing approach (and tool) to testing, July 17, 2005

By 

Michael Cohn "agile developer" (Lafayette, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book. I first saw Fit during its infancy and I didn't "get it." This book will help any reader very quickly understand how this type of testing can help any software project. And, it will help you become skilled at testing this way.

This book starts out with the very basics then progresses into a case study. The first 180 pages are meant for anyone-programmers, tester, business person, etc. This first part is extremely valuable as it helps you see how Fit can benefit your develop projects. The next 150 or so pages are meant for those with a programming background and show how to extend Fit by writing and using custom fixtures. Even though I'd written a fair number of fixtures already, I learned a lot from this section.

The book is well-written and easy to read. Chapters include periodic Q&A sections and each ends with a set of exercises. I didn't do all the exercises but I did some and they are very helpful. I highly recommend this book. You will not be disappointed.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better structured than the online docu, November 23, 2005

By 

Stephan Wiesner (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests (Paperback)

The book describes in detail how to use Fitnesse for the combination of requirements management and automated testing. Though this is interesting, the book does not offer more information than the online docu to fitnesse (though certainly in a better structured way, as the structure of the online docu is a nightmare).
The book claimes that Fitnesse should be used to test the business code (model code), not the GUI. And I certainly agree, that this it much more easy to do and maintain, but as a tester I know that most of the big bugs do not occure simply on a method level (say a wrong calculation), but lie in the integration of modules. So, depending on the framework, most bugs will not be found by those tests!
The book uses some trivial examples. For those, Fitnesse works fine and is easy to use. Most tests, however require complex objects in a certain state to work on. It is the creation and maintenance of this objects, which is the tough thing. So, like usually, the trivial examples are hardly helpful.
The book does not give a structured introduction on how to actually use Fitnesse (as a WiKi). For a beginner, it can be very confusing, how to even create a page, why the TEST button appears on some pages, but not on others, etc.

Conclusion: The book does give a good overview on how to create tests with Fitnesse. Wether Fitnesse itself can help you will depend largely on things not covered in the book, though. It does not offer more than the online docu, but it gives more detail and is better structured.
Ah, and I really liked the layout of the book (green color, many links to other chapters, short chapters).

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Developers and Customers, July 21, 2005

By 

Steven E. Newton - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests (Paperback)

This book has been called "two books in one", and I definitely agree. The first two parts are for customers and other non-programming team members. The latter parts are aimed at developers and have the technical topics. Ward said that as he and Rick were working on the book it started to get confusing, switching back and forth between the business-facing discussions and the technical discussions. Ward felt it best to cover the basics first, so they agreed to separate the book to speak to the two audiences one at a time. The resulting organization allows the book plenty of breathing room to address the needs of both audiences.

The "Questions & Answers" sections scattered throughout the book contain some of the most valuable gems. Here are a couple of examples related to ActionFixture:

* From Chapter 10, p 73, "Some action rows have a keyword in the last cell. Is that optional?"
* From Chapter 22, p 193, "Why does the actor have to be a subclass of fit.Fixture?

You'll have to buy the book to see the answers, though!

I wrote of a conversion of FIT to the Objective-C language -- with a bit of help from Ward. Still I found real value in having a book that speaks from the customer perspective and delves into creating FIT tables from that perspective.