Fit from a Developer's Perspective

In an earlier post, Mandy wrote about the benefits of using Fit from a business owner’s perspective. I’d like to add to that and describe some of the benefits that I’ve seen as a developer working with Fit from deep in the trenches.

In our development process, we attempt to create Fit tests for new user stories up front in collaboration with business owners (let’s call this “Fit-driven development” - because we love the “X-driven” paradigms). This has several advantages for developers. First, we learn the language and rules of the business. This is crucial to any attempt at domain-driven design (see?), in which we carry the language and concepts of the business domain deep into our applications. Second, it gets us collaborating with the business owners on a day to day basis beyond the bounds of the SCRUM meeting. This builds knowledge of each other’s worlds and, more importantly, empathy, which is key to a building a positive working relationship. Third, we add to the test coverage in our system – tests that are usually at a level higher than unit tests, like integration or acceptance tests. All of this contributes to being able to get it right the first time.

Now, to be honest, we don’t always develop Fit-first but when we don’t I often find myself wishing that we had – for example, the time when I discovered that the language I used in my code was woefully inconsistent with the language the business uses, or the time when we implemented a core piece of logic and had to rewrite it when we learned that we had misinterpreted the partially-erased scribble on the whiteboard - shock! As a developer who must admit to rewriting code too frequently, tools, like Fit, that help to get it right the first time are whole-heartedly welcomed.