This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: Serious About Agile Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

Are you serious about Agile? TDD? Are you serious about full test coverage? Are you serious about automated testing? Then I challenge you to include the following kind of language in your contracts:

ThoughtWorks agrees to include unit, functional, and acceptance tests that are able to run automatically for all code delivered. The unit and functional tests will cover at least 90% of the codebase, as measured by a C0 code coverage analysis tool such as rcov for Ruby. The acceptance tests will automatically verify the functionality of all features delivered by ThoughtWorks. Though the acceptance tests will be written by ThoughtWorks, ThoughtWorks will write them based on direction and feedback given by [your client name here.] ThoughtWorks agrees that software is not considered delivered until all tests are able to run successfully without the involvement of a person.

That is real language from a real ThoughtWorks statement of work. To forsake full automated testing on that project would constitue a breach-of-contract! Now that's what I call being serious about Agile.

Are you an IT buyer that employs consulting firms that claim to be Agile? Why not give your vendors some cold, hard motivation to follow their own advice? (Or work with one that does!)